November 20, 2005
AFT Presents at Energy Summit 05
Flowserve Corp. hosted the second annual Energy Summit at the Omni Park West in Dallas, Texas on October 17, 2005. Keynote speaker Congressman Joe Barton, chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce, discussed the 2005 energy bill and the future of energy in America. Other speakers included representatives from industry leading companies such as GE Electric, DuPont, ExxonMobil, Rockwell Automation and AFT’s own Trey Walters.
Trey’s presentation, “Energy Reduction Through Fluid Flow Analysis & Optimization”, discussed the significant contribution pumps make to US electrical energy consumption, accounting for about 20% of the total, and the limitations inherent in efforts to reduce this by addressing pumps alone. All pump’s function as part of a piping system so that efforts to improve efficiency must focus on the system to achieve significant reductions in energy consumption and associated system life cycle cost. And, there is plenty of room for improvement through pump system computer modeling and optimization.
The greatest opportunities exist in new systems where flexibility in pipe sizing is available maximizing the benefits of system optimization with tools such as AFT Mercury. Applications to four systems at a leading chemical company were discussed where optimization using AFT Mercury yielded a 5 year average life cycle cost reduction of 50%.
Pipeline Optimization Study Saves Big $
AFT recently assisted Saudi Aramco in the optimization of a new sea water pipeline system used to increase oil recovery by injecting sea water at high pressure into the oil field. Supply pumps transfer sea water from its source to injection pumps at the oil field 145 Km away.
The scale of this system is impressive with an approximately 60” diameter pipeline operating at 970 psig. Multiple gas turbine driven supply and injection pumps are used totaling more than 150,000 HP.
The cost of such a system matches the scale of its specifications. Using AFT Mercury technology to optimize the sizing of the system piping and pumps, Saudi Aramco was able to achieve savings of more than $100,000,000.
AFT Welcomes New Distributor in Egypt
We’re pleased to welcome our newest distributor, eIe Group of Cairo, Egypt. eIe Group represents a number of complimentary engineering software tools, including those by Coade and Autodesk.
We invite engineers in Egypt interested in learning more about the benefits of system modeling with AFT software to contact Mr. Abdel Hakam of the eIe Group at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
Tip
Modeling Valve Opening in Fathom XTS
To model a valve opening transient from the closed position, apply the Special Condition / Closed on the specifications window Optional tab. Transient Data then starts with Cv = 0, increasing to the full open Cv value, or, if modeling the valve loss as a K value, transient data starts with K = -1 (K = infinity), decreasing to a K value for the open position (all K values other than the full closed K value are positive).