Executive Summary

This plant design project was commissioned to come up a viable design for production of
Melamine Urea Formaldehyde Resin. This plant has 2 main stages; the first stage is to
produce Formalin while the second stage is to blend Formalin, Urea Melamine
homogeneously. For two semesters, there were a total of 5 milestones. The details of the
milestones are as follows:

 Milestone 1 – Feasibility studies were done to ensure if the plant can be constructed
without any hurdles or significant issues. A suitable process technology was chosen
to produce Formalin. Safety and Environmental issues, plant location and economic
evaluation was thoroughly studied and we concluded to carry on with the design.

 Milestone 2 - The hazards and the environmental issues from formaldehyde were
identified and the control measures were studied so as to produce a green,
sustainable and environmental friendly process of the formaldehyde plant. FMEA,
HAZOP and HAZAN studies were included

 Milestone 3 – This milestone focuses on studying the mass and energy balances
around the major equipment. Manual calculations and the calculations from
simulation software Aspen Hysys were compared.

 Milestone 4 – Each of the group members designed major equipment each. The
major equipments are Vaporizer, Fluidized Bed Reactor, Absorber, Distillation Column
and Resin Batch Reactor.

 Milestone 5 – Detailed studies on Risk Assessment, Energy Efficiency and

Integration, Safety and Environmental Analysis and Economic Evaluation were done.
It can been concluded this plant to produce MUF is viable. The Return of Investment
and the payback period were calculated.