2021 - A large part of engineering is evaluating design tradeoffs. For example, in a pumping system, one pump option may be more efficient than others, but that efficiency often comes at larger initial cost. A less capital-intensive pump might be less efficient or have additional maintenance costs to consider. Similarly, system configurations have their own cost tradeoffs to consider. Designing only for minimum energy use or minimum initial cost is unlikely to find an optimal solution due to these tradeoffs. Instead, minimizing the combined initial capital costs and recurring energy and maintenance costs is essential for optimal pump selection and system configuration. See how Dr. Ricardo FF Pontes with the Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP) used AFT Fathom to explore pump and system configuration's impact on system cost.

2021 - While nuclear fusion has not yet been proven as a self-sustaining source of energy, many efforts have been made to design its supporting systems in anticipation of its development. Vertex Piping Engineers was granted a project to engineer, fabricate, and commission an experimental helium cooling loop for ITER, the largest international research and engineering project to prove the viability of nuclear fusion. This cooling loop will be used to evaluate different components of the ITER project, including the Indian Test Blanket Module, fusion blanket wall mock-ups, Pb-Li heat exchangers, and other fusion blanket components. See how Vertex modeled the compressible helium system in AFT Arrow to determine its allowable operating conditions.

2021 -  Ingenero Technologies was tasked with analyzing a petrochemical transfer line issue causing a hazard during truck loading. Ingenero’s client experienced sudden pressure surge near the end of the truck loading process, generating pressures in excess of 13.2 barg (191 psig). Since a loading operation would occur once or twice per month, the client requested a root cause analysis on the pressure surge to determine a mitigation strategy. Read what recommendations were implemented to significantly reduce loading surge and avoid vibration and noise. 

2021 - You don’t have to be a rocket engineer to use AFT Fathom or AFT Arrow... unless your job is rocket engineering. KETEMA designs systems for re-usable and expendable launch vehicles (ELV’s), today’s formal term for rockets. The design of fluid and thermal aspects of the ELV systems at KETEMA was the responsibility of Ichi Wakabayashi, Senior Mechanical Engineer. He chose AFT Fathom 2 and AFT Arrow 1 to help his group model the many fluid systems aboard an ELV. Read more about this case and see how AFT has evolved since it was first written in 1997. 

2021 - Michael Arthur, with Hydrus Works, LLC, evaluated a failing stormwater system for a Gulf Coast refinery. While flooding mitigation was the primary concern, Hydrus Works was also providing a second opinion on a larger incumbent firm’s expensive recommendations. See how Hydrus Works’ use of AFT Fathom, and their unique data collection, allowed them to explore design alternatives which ultimately allowed the firm to shave 35% from the original proposed $70MM scope, a $25MM reduction while meeting client design requirements.

2021 - Ingenero Technologies engineers Santosh Kumar and Swapnil A Paingankar were tasked with analyzing a petrochemical cooling water system which was unable to meet system design requirements. Insufficient cooling water supply limited plant capacity, thus reducing the profitability of the plant. Read how the team performed their hydraulic analysis in AFT Fathom, revealing the shortcomings of the existing system and providing design alternatives to return to design capacity.

2020 - Ross Haimes, Principal Engineer with Hatch, was tasked with performing a waterhammer analysis on a complex water injection system located offshore in Brazil. The system recycled produced water from the crude refinement process at a Floating Production Storage & Offloading facility (FPSO) to several well head platforms. See how Haimes was able to test many potential waterhammer scenarios to determine the actual peak pressure for the system.

2020 - Cristian Lira, Senior Consultant at Procure SPA, performed a root cause analysis of an existing Energy Recovery System (ERS) within a major desalination plant. The goal of the study was to recreate the ERS shutdown to determine the impact on the brine discharge pipeline. This would inform a proposed solution for constant, non-programmed shutdowns.

2020 - Rupesh Soni, a Senior Process Engineer for Stone Oil & Gas, was asked to design and size a new booster pump station on a plant site to increase peak pumping capacity from a Tailings Management Facility. To manage the overall water level at this facility, excess process water (such as tailings run‐off or rainwater) is pumped via a 14.6 km (9.1 mi) pipeline from the TMF to an ocean outfall diffuser. See how Soni used AFT Impulse to size booster pumps and analyze the pipeline for Maximum Allowable Operating Head (MAOH).

2020  - Brown and Caldwell was hired to design the reliability and process improvements project at a 64 million gallons per day (240,000 m3/day) wastewater treatment plant. As the largest wastewater treatment plant serving its surrounding area, this plant is the linchpin of the wastewater treatment system providing a backup to other neighboring plants in cases of heavy flows, construction related bypassing, or emergencies. See how Maren Deal used AFT Arrow for the design and planning of the upgrades to the plant’s aeration system, as well as for the optimization of the existing operation.

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.