When plants are built, there is more to consider during the build than simply turning feeds into products. There are extensive guidelines and regulations around safe operation, particularly with volatile, flammable, and explosive materials. Many of these regulations have to do with safe distancing, barriers, and regular hazard assessments accompanied by suitable mitigations. In this project, you will be laying out a methanol purification plant. The production of large volumes of high$-$purity methanol, an extremely volatile and flammable organic chemical, makes the layout of this plant a significant design step to undertake to ensure safe operation.

Plant Layout

Propose a layout for the units in the methanol purification plant which ensures safe shutdown of all system units in the case of catastrophic failure of the purifier column and$/$or the attached reflux condenser. The layout must be provided as a top$-$down view of the plant, and must be drawn to scale, with the scale indicated. All calculations relevant to the design must be included.

The pressure in the column is maintained at $90$ psi; the pressure is dropped by $20\%$ in the reflux condenser to "flash" some methanol into vapour

Foul methanol feed:

$250$ USGPM

$70\mathrm{.}10$ v$/$v$\%$ methanol

$29\mathrm{.}25$ v$/$v$\%$ turpentine

Balance non$-$flammable impurities $($e$.$g$.$ sulphate salts$)$

~NTP before preheating$/$pre$-$pressurization

Steam feed: $110$ cfm$,$ assumed to be pure water

Residence time in column is $6\mathrm{.}00$ minutes

Of the purifier's contents, $96\mathrm{.}00$ w$/$w$\%$ of the methanol, $1\mathrm{.}15$ w$/$w$\%$ of the steam, and $0\mathrm{.}35$ w$/$w$\%$ of the turpentine end up in condenser

Units other than the purifier and condenser are assumed to contain insufficient volatiles to present explosion risks, but may still be flammable

Other parts of the larger process $($SOG and ClO$2,$ as well as the source of the foul methanol feed$)$ contain flammable$/$explosive materials

The plant operates in Northern Ontario, with an average ambScreenshot $2024-04-08$ at $11\mathrm{.}25\mathrm{.}07$AM$$Screenshot $2024-04-08$ at $11\mathrm{.}25\mathrm{.}23$AM$$Screenshot $2024-04-08$ at $11\mathrm{.}25\mathrm{.}37$AM$$Screenshot $2024-04-08$ at $11\mathrm{.}25\mathrm{.}53$AMient temperature of $10\backslash$deg C and average relative humidity of $40\%.$