November 26, 2002
AFT IntelliFlow® Technology Featured at Pump Expo
AFT's Trey Walters and Dupont's Judy Hodgson jointly presented the paper " Optimizing Pumping Systems To Minimize First or Life Cycle Cost" at the Pump Expo in Fort Washington, PA October 22. The paper describes the intelligent system sizing technology behind AFT Mercury, IntelliFlow®, and presents case histories of the application of this technology to four pumping systems. Demonstrating the significant benefits to be derived with intelligent system sizing, the case histories illustrated cost savings on the subject piping systems ranging from 17% to 72%. The case histories illustrate using AFT Mercury to optimize system design for:
- control valve vs. vfd
- a wastewater system optimizing pipe size vs. capacity
- a sulfuric acid system including the varying effects of corrosion with velocity
- molten sulfur transfer system optimizing pump sizing including variability of pump maintenance costs with distance from best efficiency point.
You can read the full paper: Optimizing Pumping Systems to Minimize First or Life-Cycle Cost.
Technical Seminars and Training
A regional AFT Fathom seminar was held in Houston, October 14 & 15, proving both convenient and cost effective for several of the many AFT Fathom users in the Houston area. Immediately following this 2-day seminar a second AFT Fathom seminar was held at Fluor's nearby office in Sugar Land for some of the many users there. Further a field, a four-day training seminar on the use of AFT Mercury was held in Venezuela this month for the firms PEDVSA and Petrolera Ameriven. A joint venture between Phillips Petroleum, Texaco and PDVSA, the Ameriven project will extract, treat and transport crude oil via pipeline from the Hamaca area in the southern part of the state of Anzoategui to the Jose area in the northern part of the state.
Exporting data to a spreadsheet
While AFT piping system modeling software provides a large number of available output parameters, there may be times when you need to do some post calculations from the available results to derive a particular parameter. This is greatly facilitated by being able to bring output data into a spreadsheet. Two methods are available to accomplish this. The first is to simply click the output cell, or drag the cursor over multiple output cells, press 'ctl+c' to copy the data to the Windows clipboard, then switch to your spreadsheet application and past the data in the desired location. Alternatively, while in the Output window, select 'File / Export Output', which will open the 'Export Output' window where you can specify which part or parts of the output you want exported and the desired delimiting (comma, tab, etc.). The saved file can then be opened directly within your spreadsheet application.
Modeling Effects of System Wear
AFT modeling software offers a variety of ways to analyze the effects of wear and aging on a piping system.
- Model increased effective wall roughness due to scaling or corrosion by specifying a corresponding roughness factor. You can do this directly within the Pipe Specifications window by selecting 'Unspecified' in the 'Friction Model Data Set' area of the 'Pipe Model' tab then entering the specific roughness value to be used. Alternatively, you may set up alternate 'friction data sets' within the Pipe Material Database with descriptive names (e.g. "10 year old pipe") and then simply select them within the Pipe Specifications windows from the drop down list in the 'Friction Model Data Set' area of the 'Pipe Model' tab.
- Heavy scaling reducing the effective pipe ID can be reflected by specifying a 'Scaling Factor' on the 'Optional' tab of the Pipe Specifications window (which you may want to use in conjunction with increased wall roughness).
- Applying 'Design Factors' to pipe or junction friction losses or to pump performance, specified on the 'Optional' tab of pipe and junctions specifications windows. To model increased pressure drop for pipes and junction losses you'll specify a value greater than 1.0 (e.g. 1.20 means the calculated pressure drop will be increased by 20% in the analysis). Conversely, modeling pump or compressor performance degradation requires specifying a value less than 1.0 (e.g. for a value of 0.9, 90% of the pump or compressor/fan curve head will be used).
This is a great place to be using Scenario Manager where a child scenario can be made from the 'new' system model and the 'aging' factors applied. As you investigate varying design parameters (e.g. different pipes sizes, valve Cv's, etc.), make changes in the 'new' system scenario and they will be automatically reflected in the lower, 'aged' system model scenario.