"MEGA Tower" Design Considerations

Economic principles tell us that "Economies of Scale" drives us to larger and larger chemical plant sizes.  Limits to plant sizes that were present decades ago have disappeared and the "norm" is now what we refer to as "Mega" sized plants.  With this in mind, distillation tower sizes are now being designed in excess of 14 meters in diameter and towers heights are in excess of 100 meters tall.  This paper deals with design parameters that need to be considered when designing such "Mega" towers.  Parameters such as deflection, shop installation, support rings, bed depth and inter bed depth, beam count and sizes, vessel roundness and feed introduction will all be addressed in this paper.