An Overview of SuperChems for DIERS for Emergency Relief System and Effluent Handling Designs

The Design Institute for Emergency Relief Systems (DIERS) Users Group awarded Arthur D. Little, Inc. a contract to provide the next generation computer program for emergency relief system and effluent handling designs. The new computer program, SuperChems for DIERS, is a dynamic simulator, capable of performing emergency relief system and effluent handling designs for complex geometries and multiphase reaction systems. In addition, SuperChems for DIERS is an equation-of-state based program which provides several benefits over existing non-equation-of-state based methods for systems involving supercritical reactions like polymerizations of butadiene and acrylonitrile, solution effects such as HCl/Water, and a priori determination of phase-splitting. This new computer program allows the user to dynamically simulate several common configurations for vent containment design. For example, the user is able to simulate a vessel discharging a two-phase mixture into a quench/vent where the catch/vent tank will vent to a stack or a scrubber. Effluent handling equipment available includes separators (horizontal and vertical), cyclones, etc. The impact of back pressure and continuing reaction in the vent containment system is accounted for in the dynamic simulations. 1