Developing a comprehensive understanding of fluid movement, energy consumption and system efficiency in chemical applications, pipe flow analysis can be an effective tool to provide a full understanding of everything that’s happening throughout the system. That crucial data can increase reliability, performance, and efficiency throughout the chemical application.

When utilizing pipe flow analysis in most chemical processing applications, there are two important considerations:

1. Designing a system from the beginning. How do you size the system correctly from the beginning? This is something that can be done through many hand calculations. It’s common to use spreadsheets, but the spreadsheets change over time. People make changes, and there are issues and human errors with hand calculations. It’s laborious from a time standpoint, and there are inconsistencies with how calculations are made. If you get something wrong it compounds over time. That’s why an out-of-the-box, purpose-built solution makes more sense.
2. Troubleshooting. Uptime and productivity are the biggest impacts for the bottom line. If you having operational issues with your system or if you’re making changes to system components or redesigning flow paths, how are you ensuring optimal and reliable operation? Are you adding pipe or are you adding a new process within a plant that’s physically already built? What are the requirements of the system with regard to temperatures, pressures, flows, etc?

Today’s chemical processing applications are benefiting from sophisticated modeling pipe flow analysis software solutions.

Fluid dynamic simulation software for engineers can be used to calculate pressure drop and pipe flow distribution in liquid and low-velocity gas piping and ducting systems. This type of software offers many advantages for chemical applications, including:

• Accurately simulating individual system components and interaction
• Tightly integrating equipment characteristics, analysis and output with your system’s schematic representation
• Providing a wide array of features without sacrificing the need for a short learning curve
• Allowing freedom to focus on your system, not the mechanics of software manipulation
• Significantly improving the quality of systems engineering that can be achieved, leading to less costly, more efficient, and more reliable piping systems
• Decreasing the potential risk of unplanned shutdowns and improving system uptime.

In some cases, chemical processors need to focus on the compressibility of the fluid. Some powerful dynamic simulation and analysis software solutions are used to calculate pressure surge transients in liquid piping systems caused by waterhammer.

This type of pipe flow analysis easily models a wide range of system components and surge devices. It understands the transient response of your system, knowing how valves, pumps and other components will dynamically interact with each other.

In addition, this kind of pipe flow analysis evaluates the effect of pressure surges due to vapor cavity collapse by modeling vapor cavitation and liquid column separation. It also validates the design of safety features to produce safer, more economical pipe systems.

In all applications, but especially with chemical processing, it’s important to understand how your system is behaving and to ensure the requirements for the system, including temperature, environmental influences, pressure, flow, etc.

From a chemical standpoint, it’s important to understand what the different chemicals are doing and how things are reacting to the different types of chemicals. It’s important to monitor the heat, as well. Some chemicals are volatile and harsh, so they need to be monitored while running through piping systems.

At a chemical processing facility, there are many different variables impacting the fluid and system properties at any given time. If you’re having a problem with a current system that’s already been designed and in place, you need a clear understanding of exactly what’s happening and what’s causing the problem. For new system designs, modeling the system from the start creates confidence that you are mitigating the risks of failure down the line.

By using modeling software for chemical processing pipe analysis, operators have peace of mind to avoid catastrophic events like waterhammer and other undesirable system transients. These technologies help to ensure pressure extremes that are within the design allowable. Effective pipe flow analysis solutions provide the ability to properly size and locate surge suppression equipment, and determine imbalanced pipe forces and sizing structural supports for troubleshooting existing systems.

For more information about pipe flow analysis solutions for chemical processing applications, please follow this link: https://www.aft.com/products/fathom