SimSci-Esscor, DNV Software collaborate on plant safety design application

By Plant Engineering Staff November 15, 2006

The SimSci-Esscor unit of Invensys and DNV Software have developed a link between SimSci-Esscor’s VISUAL FLOW safety system design software and DNV Software’s PHASTFX flammable effects software module.The link allows engineers in process plants to estimate flammable effects during design work.

VISUAL FLOW provides engineers with 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, which include jet flame, pool fire and Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion (BLEVE).

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. VISUAL FLOW is designed to address this need and improves the productivity of teams assigned to complete this task either as part of a new design, a plant re-vamp or an ongoing operation. With the link between PHASTFX and Visual Flow v5.2, 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 make estimations for 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 consider key process safety issues earlier in the design phase. VISUAL FLOW users will also tap into the collective process safety experience of thousands of PHAST users worldwide.