ECH 158C Design Project Final Report TO: Jason White FROM: Bryan Eglan, Daron Fong, Brett Koehn, and Simar Singh DATE: May 27, 2016 SUBJECT: Revised Methyl Acetate Plant Design Report Attached to this memo is our final conceptual design and economic analysis for the methyl acetate plant project commissioned by Ester Chemicals Corporation (ECC). The purpose of this memo is to outline the revisions and improvements carried out on the previous design report. In the updated report, a distillation column previously used to separate the acetic acid and sulfuric acid in the bottoms of the first column has been removed, and the entire stream is now simply recycled back into the reactor as excess reactants and unconsumed catalyst, thus saving on capital and operating costs. The economic analysis was revised to include an higher, much more realistic capital cost, and a heat exchanger network was designed and analyzed to optimize utility savings. Lastly, improvements to the design