Hello - I am a process engineer in an amines plant and am looking for some guidance for a distillation tower overpressure scenario. Upon power failure, all incoming and outgoing valves to the tower fail closed, bottling it up and cooling water to the condenser is lost. Steam to the reboiler is also lost. As the contents of the tower mix in the bottom, the tower begins to pressure up and has caused the PSV to relieve. I have been tasked with checking the viability of running a small portion of fire water through the condenser during this event (not saying I agree with this solution but Im new here and dont want to rock the boat). I have determined the vapor "generation" rate due to mixing but am lost as to what the real flow to the condenser will be as the only driving force is the pressure reduction caused by the condensing vapor on the tubes. To me this seems to be a problem of natural convection that might be seen in a surface condenser used to pull a vacuum. Can anyone point me to a method for determining the cooling water flow needed and/or checking the sizing of my condenser? I just need the condensing rate to be equal to the generation rate. I'll also add that there is no excessive pressure drop from the tower to condesner from the flow I wish to condense.
Maybe I am over-complicating this but thanks for any help you can provide.
Jamie
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