(259f) Design of a Process Safety Focused Tank Purging Process for a Chemical Engineering Unit Operations Course

Within a chemical engineering unit operations course, students are often asked to apply their knowledge of process safety to understanding the safety of the experiments in the laboratory. While this is valuable in allowing students to see the application of process safety across different pieces of process equipment, most experiments in the lab are not explicitly designed around process safety concepts. Therefore, this work aimed to design an experiment for a unit operations laboratory focused on the process of purging a tank for flammable fuel storage and transfer. In industry, nitrogen can be used to purge systems to ensure oxygen levels are maintained below the limiting oxygen concentration to prevent fires and explosions. The designed experiment features two tanks that can be used to demonstrate the process of purging a storage tank and transferring a flammable liquid between two storage tanks. Students can determine the cycling requirements for tank purging as a function of target oxygen concentration, as well as the low and high pressure for the cycle. Additionally, they can determine the volume of nitrogen required to reduce oxygen concentrations when purging the system under atmospheric conditions. Through this experiment, students are exposed to important, industrially relevant process safety concepts and can compare experimental data back to theoretical models for pressure cycling and sweep-through purging. This presentation will focus on the design of the equipment, as well as present experimental data fit with theoretical models. Through design of experiments on process safety, students can increase their knowledge of process safety concepts and theory in a unit operations course.