Advanced Safety Accident Analysis for Temperature Variation on Methanol Chemical Plant

Carbon capture and utilization (CCU) is the process of capturing carbon dioxide (CO
2
) to be recycled for further usage. Captured CO
2
can be converted to several products which is one group being alcohols, such as methanol, to use as biofuels and other alternative and renewable sources of energy. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of different temperature on methanol plant due to consequence accidents analysis in Papar, Sabah, Malaysia. This work investigated the possibility of (1) to identify chemical component’s mass and volume in the mixture for different temperature on methanol production and (2) to quantify the safety of methanol plant using distance and area plot threat analysis for different temperature. Based on the inherent safer concept, the increasing of the temperature will affect the plant safety. In this study, there have three plant condition which have the volume of 42 m
³
and the pressure of 442 bar at outlet stream but with three different temperatures which are 220°C, 260°C, and 300°C. To model the process and determine the mass density of the mixture, mass fraction, and volume fraction, HYSYS software was utilized. ALOHA and MARPLOT tools were then used to determine the distance and area plot threat of toxicity, thermal radiation and overpressure. Results proved that Plant 1 with 220°C operating temperature has the farthest red zone distance and highest rate of fatalities (751 m and 56.6%), compare to Plant 2 and 3, coming from MeOH toxicity and MeOH BLEVE at night time, respectively. This study can be used to recommend suitable and safe location for methanol plant and its surrounding area.