David I. Verrelli; Formaldehyde from Methanol; CHE4117 final year Design Project report; Department of Chemical Engineering, Monash University; Melbourne, Australia; 1999: circa 250 pages. NOTES ----- (As at 30 January 2017.) REPRODUCTION OF PRINTED VERSION As far as possible this PDF document faithfully represents the submitted hardcopy (inclusive of typographical errors). Due to very slight differences in dimensioning with the legacy and current versions of Microsoft Word (not to mention fonts), occasionally a word was shifted up to the previous line or down to the following line. A further issue is observed in that in the old version hyphenation inside tables was implemented, but at first was not correspondingly implemented in the current version of Word; hence, manual adjustments were made to match the printed version. Due to limitations in the printers used to generate the hardcopy in 1999, all printing was done in 'black and white' (Excel spreadsheets and charts) or greyscale (Word documents, aside from embedded chart images). The colouration of this PDF file faithfully represents that saved in the electronic source files. Additionally, although the Copperplate Gothic Bold font was used in the header, apparently this font was not installed on university systems where printing was performed, so in the hardcopy that text was rendered as Arial font. In Chapters 10 and 12, due to a software flaw in updating the document fields, (almost) all tables and figures were incorrectly printed with the designation of Figure or Table "10-1"/"12-1". However, the field codes in the source file were actually correct, and so these have produced the correct caption labels in this PDF file. Time and date-stamps fields were included in the electronic files, but these were for the 'current' date and time. Therefore, in this PDF the dates and times have been manually adjusted to those corresponding to when the respective pages of the submitted hardcopy were printed (or, strictly speaking: sent to the printer). Hand annotations made in blue/black pen on original printouts included in the submitted hardcopy have been emulated in this PDF file by means of blue/black script- or handwriting-style fonts. Images that were originally photocopied, cut, pasted, and re-photocopied to produce the submitted hardcopy, have in the PDF file been separately scanned from the submitted hardcopy. GENERAL COMMENTS This project was carried out in a six-person group as a collaboration, with individually-written reports. In the first academic 'semester' of 1999, four-person groups undertook a preliminary familiary-building assignment studying the main features of formaldehyde production, directed towards Market Evaluation and Forecasting, and producing a brief (9-page) report. This was Tutorial Assignment I in subject CHE4114 ("Management I"), completed circa 30 April 1999. Additional preliminary work included computation of operating expenses under various scenarios (in CHE4114), and studying of vapour–liquid equilibria for relevant the methanol–water binary system (in CHE3117, a third-year subject). Only after this, leading into the second academic 'semester' of 1999, was the Design Project proper commenced. This was in subject CHE4117 ("Design Project"). The earliest timestamp on electronic files saved for this project was 21 July 1999, and the latest timestamp was 17 October 1999. The report was submitted on 18 October 1999. Formally, there were twelve academic teaching weeks, plus one week of semester break (total of 13 weeks) to complete the Design Project report. The remaining three to three-and-a-half weeks of the 'semester' were devoted to preparing the Design Project poster & oral presentation with the Group. CONTEXT The (fictitious) consultancy company name "MonMark" was a portmanteau of "Monash" and (possibly) "marketing". The (fictitious) client company name "Rhonnan" was a portmanteau of "Rhodes" and "Brennan", after two leading co-ordinators of subject CHE4117, namely Martin Rhodes and David Brennan. STATISTICS ---------- Main body (all 12 chapters, including including footnotes, endnotes & text-boxes, excluding inserted A3 table and specification sheets) Page count: 96 Word count: 54,988 Inserted A3 table and specification sheets Page count: 38 Word count: 4,424 Main body (all 12 chapters, including including footnotes, endnotes & text-boxes, excluding inserted A3 table and specification sheets) Page count: 134 Word count: 63,835 (Footnotes, endnotes & text-boxes increase the word count by about 10%.)