Integration improves flare-modeling analysis

By Control Engineering Staff December 14, 2006

Regulatory agencies are challenging the process industries to verify the safety of plant operations. A standard requirement is often a comprehensive model of flare relief systems of the plant with full documentation of network structure, control systems/strategy, and maximum relief rates capacity. Integration between two software packages means process control engineers can more quickly and easily estimate a range of flammable effects during design work.

The SimSci-Esscor unit of Invensys and DNV Software have developed a link between SimSci-Esscor’s Visual Flow v5.2 safety system design software and DNV Software’s Phastfx flammable effects software module. Visual Flow is a tool for designing, documenting, and modeling safety systems, pressure relief networks, and general plant fluid-flow systems. Applications include relief networks, systems containing any configuration of multiple flares, relief valves, knock-out drums, and loops. Phastfx is a subset of Phast and contains the major flammable and explosion models, including jet flame, pool fire, and BLEVE (boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion).

The link between the systems means users can pass stream information at the base of the flare to Phastfx for initializing one of Phastfx’s jet flame routines. Additionally, users can estimate other flammable scenarios, including pool fire or BLEVE, or a calculation of various vapor cloud explosion scenarios. The key benefit for Visual Flow users is that they can now quickly and accurately consider key process safety issues earlier in the design phase.

Renee Robbins , Control Engineering editorial director