Achieve Safe Plant Operation
Plant maintenance is part of a planned programme or emergency work that may have to be carried out at short notice after a breakdown. It always involves non-routine activities and can expose people and the surroundings to a range of risks. Fires, spills, equipment breakdowns and accidents can result in lost production and risk liabilities.
Some items of plant and equipment may have to accomplish safety-critical features which need to be realized by accurate design procedures and installation.
The blowdown of any pressurised pipeline or vessel, for instance, arises as a requirement of scheduled maintenance or due to an unforeseen occurrence requiring immediate attention. The procedure for blowdown is a considerable undertaking given the physical impact of the process, the venting arrangement and the level to which cooling occurs within a pipeline.
The pressure relief valve is an integral part of safety and it is a device which controls the pressure in a system by relieving the pressurised fluid in to an auxiliary passage out of the system. The determination of the relief device size accurately is a necessity as undersizing may cause equipment failure and oversizing may lead to higher operating costs.
GB Simulation Technology possesses the knowledge and experience in these area
Areas of Expertise
Blowdown Analysis
High pressure pipeline blowdown can lead to a hazard because of the very low temperatures generated within the pipeline and in the tailpipe leading to the flare stack. A two- phase flow may occur in the tailpipe. In the safe design of blowdown systems, an essential design step is to ensure that temperatures resulting from auto-refrigeration during depressurisation do not lead to a risk of brittle fracture both in the process equipment and flare system. The discharge rate and the minimum metal temperature should be determined accurately. Quantitative analysis of the rapid depressurisation which is called as blowdown of vessels or pipelines is an essential task during the design and safety analysis of Oil & Gas facilities and other high-pressure installations. GB Simulation Technology blowdown software uses transient flow modelling to determine the discharge rate and the metal temperatures. The EXACT method for the accurate determination of discharge rate is used. The EXACT METHOD applies to all fluid states: liquid, vapour, dense, saturated or mixed phase. The method determines the maximum discharge across the orifice by rigorous optimization of the complex set of mass, thermo and fluid property equations. Some vessels and short pipe sections with high content volumes have complex geometries which may require solutions to the finer details are carried out in a 3-D mesh model using finite-volume numerical analysis.
Discharge Rate by Rigorous Analysis
Discharge Rate by Rigorous Analysis
The pressure relief valve is used to control or limit the pressure in a system or the pressure which can build up for a process upset, instrument or equipment failure, or fire. The relief valve is a safety device operating with the correct sizing giving out the necessary predetermined safe discharge rate. The depressurization during a planned shutdown is accomplished by controlled release of the contents. An accidental discharge can be caused by the failure of high pressure gas, liquid and a dense-phase pipeline. In all these situations the accurate determination of the release rate is a crucial factor for taking the critical-to-safety operation decisions. The relief device sizing determines the proper discharge area of the relief device and diameter of the discharge orifice associated with inlet and outlet piping. GB Simulation Technology Pipeline Simulator software ORIFICE DISCHARGE module models the discharge through an orifice. Typical applications include a leak from a high pressure pipeline, discharge through a safety valve and controlled system blowdown through an orifice plate into the flare stack. The ORIFICE DISCHARGE uses the EXACT method to determine the discharge rate accurately. The EXACT METHOD applies to all fluid states: liquid, vapour, dense, saturated or mixed phase. The method determines the maximum discharge across the orifice by rigorous optimization of the complex set of mass, thermo and fluid property equations. The EXACT METHOD provides results superior to the ASME VIII / API RP 520 sizing equations. The ORIFICE DISCHARGE also includes options for the ASME VIII / API RP 520 sizing formulae for both critical and subcritical flow of gases and vapours which may serve as useful assessments for comparison purposes.
Advanced modelling and simulation in pipelines cover a wide domain in process engineering, fluid transportation, mechanics of process equipment and safety devices. Innovative simulators built on most state-of-the-art technology help designing a completely new pipeline network that runs at optimal efficiency or expanding an existing one.
Innovative Simulations
Plant safety requires items of plant and equipment accomplish safety-critical features which need to be realized by accurate design procedures and installation and during maintenance carried out as part of a planned programme or emergency work. Quantitative analysis of the rapid depressurisation of vessels or pipelines is an essential task during the design and safety analysis of Oil & Gas facilities and other high-pressure installations.
Plant Safety
The simulator takes an active participation in the pipeline operations in ensuring safety and economy. Steady-state simulations provide flow assurance workflows for front-end system design, line modifications and production operations. Transient state implies the effect of time over the operational behaviour of an industrial facility. Successful pipeline operations is achieving the profit optimality by the correct management of the capacity, inventory, and storage while avoiding losses and minimizing the operational cost.
Role of Simulator in Pipeline Operations
A necessary component of plant’s safety management is the training of operating personnel. Participating operating personnel could experience the behaviour of pipeline under widely different operating conditions, the practical significance of operating limits and the manipulation of operating parameters for the optimal results. ‘What if’ querying, investigating safe operating limits, process optimization, planning and scheduling can be experienced from offline simulation.
Operator Training
Fluid thermophysical properties are specific to the operation and in most industrial applications the thermophysical software is developed and validated separately in accordance with the client specifications before the properties are incorporated with the simulation software. GB Simulation Technology simulation software can also be integrated with most externally available thermophysical property packages. Some of the GB Simulation Technology thermophysical property software has been released as standalone programs.
Thermophysical Properties