Case Studies

2020 - Bernard Muller, Principal Process Engineer with MegChem, was asked to help a client with an upgrade to a tank farm where an existing pipeline transported crude from storage tanks to a refinery. As part of the upgrade, Motor Operated Valves (MOVs) were installed on the destination storage tank inlets to assist with overfill protection. The closure of these control valves could cause pressure surge. See how Muller used both AFT Fathom and AFT Impulse to determine pressures and learn what he found through utilizing software features and additional analysis. 

2019 - A one-mile (1.6 km) long piping system needed to be designed to transfer low-level radioactive waste generated during plutonium production for nuclear bombs used in World War II. The weapons production process left 56 million gallons (212 million liters) of solid and liquid radioactive wastes stored underground at Tank Farms facilities. It will be pumped to a Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) and transformed into a stable, glass product. See how ARES Corporation used AFT Fathom and AFT Impulse to determine the sustained and occasional internal pressures in the conceptual Waste Feed Delivery (WFD) system piping from the Tank Farm to the WTP Low Activity Waste (LAW) facility, as well as determine if the pressures were within the allowables of ASME B31.3.
 

2019 - These days power generation facilities have a primary goal: to adhere to regulations without significantly impacting costs and continuously supply power to the grid with their existing facility. Kiewit Engineering Group was hired to study an existing auxiliary steam system. Their customer wanted to determine if they reactivated an old glycol heating system to alleviate cold-weather acid precipitate, if existing header and steam letdowns were capable of supplying the glycol system in addition to other future users and current worst-case demands. See how Kiewit modeled the system with AFT Arrow to help their customer confidently make decisions.

2019 - Wood conducted a hydraulic transient analysis (waterhammer) of a crude-oil export system for a multinational oil and gas company. The system is located on a new production platform in the Gulf of Mexico and exports to a subsea pipeline network. The analysis was required to evaluate pressures surges and transient forces that can occur during a variety of operating scenarios. See how Wood used AFT Impulse to isometrically model a complex offshore piping system while also providing clarity on the location of particular issues. 

2019 - Ingenero’s client requested an analysis of a hot oil network in a petrochemical facility to determine practical and cost-effective options to reduce power consumption and make the operation more energy efficient. The network used high pump discharge pressure and the pressure drops across certain control valves were excessively high. See how their AFT Fathom model helped them evaluate various configuration changes and make recommendations which optimized energy use with minimal system changes. 

2019 - Larsen & Toubro Construction (L&T) was responsible for Detailed Design, Engineering, Procurement and Supply of a large cooling water system for a nuclear fusion project being constructed in France. The project specifically focuses on the Component Cooling Water System, which supplies about 100 loops. See how L&T analyzed options to successfully meet client requirements and reduce pumping costs by 12%. 

2019 - Hatch worked with a hazard and operability study (HAZOP) committee to re-validate the design and operation of a production facility in the North Sea. The committee was asked to work in accordance with regulatory requirements to identify any safety critical issues and recommend appropriate actions. They identified a range of actions related to relief and blowdown, piping, and flow assurance. During the initial HAZOP study, it was noted a surge analysis had not been conducted for the water injection system and the committee deemed there was limited understanding of pressure surge protection. See how Hatch’s Daisy Ambach used AFT Impulse to simulate the system to analyze the pressure surge.

2018 - Loukas Papathanasiou, Process Manager for Fluor, utilized AFT Fathom and AFT Impulse to complete the design of a cooling water system and the analysis of that system’s surge transients. Using both software programs together gave him the ability to easily simulate, analyze, and troubleshoot the massive system. See how he used AFT Fathom to size the equipment and to model heat transfer to determine fluid temperatures; then used the AFT Fathom model to generate the AFT Impulse model which performed the surge analysis. 

2018 - Loukas Papathanasiou, Process Manager for Fluor, utilized AFT Fathom and AFT Impulse to complete the design of a cooling water system and the analysis of that system’s surge transients. Using both software programs together gave him the ability to easily simulate, analyze, and troubleshoot the massive system. See how he used AFT Fathom to size the equipment and to model heat transfer to determine fluid temperatures; then used the AFT Fathom model to generate the AFT Impulse model which performed the surge analysis. 

2018 - Energy Northwest used AFT Fathom to model of the Fuel Pool Cooling (FPC) system at their Columbia Generating Station. This model was built to enhance the original, hand-performed, 40-year-old calculations and was extensively baselined against the existing analysis with an average of 0.28% difference between the hand calculation and the AFT Fathom analysis. See how they used the Scenario Manager to model six operational configurations to show different suction modes where the suction source varies as well as different pump configurations.

2018 - Jacobs CH2M successfully used AFT Fathom to model and simulate the addition of a thermal hydrolysis system and five digesters to and existing wastewater plant in San Francisco, California, USA. The goal was to provide sizing calculations for the piping, pumps, and control valves for the digester feed and cooling system. Read how AFT Fathom was successfully used to model a system which processes and combines two sludges: a thermally hydrolyzed sludge (THS) which was diluted before being combined with a digester sludge (DS).

2018 - Brown and Caldwell was asked to model and analyze an anaerobic digester gas system to determine the pressurization effects of adding two additional digesters as part of the wastewater treatment plant expansion project. The analysis would help determine if the increased flow from the additional digesters would over-pressurize the existing digester gas system. Note: this is one section of a two-part case study. The additional case study additional case study is modeled with AFT Fathom. 

2018 - Brown and Caldwell was tasked with developing a system curve and pump design points for heat reservoir recirculation supply and return (HRS/HRR) loop pumps. This required not only a hydraulic calculation but also a coupled heat transfer analysis of the system. Knight included convective heat transfer on pipes to ambient.  Note: this is one section of a two-part case study. The additional case study additional case study is modeled with AFT Arrow.

2018 - When PanAfrican Energy Tanzania (PAET) had an acquisition on the horizon in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, they turned to AFT Arrow to help model and analyze a downstream piping network to assess gas deliverability for a network expansion.

2018 - Hydraulic engineers from AQUATEC (SUEZ Group) were tasked with performing a hydraulic analysis of a pumping station in Barcelona’s water network to determine the real impact of two different check valves on surge pressure and compare field data with model data obtained by using AFT Impulse. The performed analysis took place at the Tibidabo Pumping Station, which transfers water from 300 m (984 ft) above sea level, to 437 m (1,434 ft) above sea level. 

2018 - Ingenero Technologies oversaw the root cause analysis (RCA) and remediation of a client’s existing resin mixed bed polishers (MBPs) in a Petrochemical facility which were used to treat condensate and demineralized water to make boiler feed water. Learn how Ingenero used AFT Impulse to successfully remedy a difficult project.

2018 - Swanson Rink, Inc. was hired to design a new data center on the 29th floor of an existing high-rise data center in Los Angeles. Mechanical Engineer, Rory Heim, used AFT Fathom to determine the minimum size of the condenser water distribution pipes serving multiple data halls on the 29th floor.

2018 - Flowserve used AFT Fathom to perform a cooling water study in order to identify the most economical scenario to run their cooling water pumps and provide a solution for the excessive erosion at the suction bell of an existing high-performing pump.

2017 - Phil Sneeringer, Tier 1 reliability engineer at Flowserve Corporation, used AFT Fathom to perform a reliability study of a raw brine injection system. Prior to the study, there had been 41 repairs on the system within five years costing more than $1.23 million. Sneeringer submitted the project to AFT’s Platinum Pipe Award (PPA) contest and received an honorable mention for the Operational Benefits and Sustainability category.

2017 – Matt Thomas, senior engineer at Sargent & Lundy, used AFT Fathom and the Extended Time Simulation (XTS) module to model a circulating water system for a four-unit power plant. The project involved converting an existing open-loop circuit to a closed-loop system. Thomas submitted the project to AFT’s Platinum Pipe Award (PPA) contest and received an honorable mention for the Software Features and Model Creativity category.