Case Studies

2023 - Protton Synergy assessed pressure surge concerns in a thick paste disposal system. The paste is a by-product of a steel manufacturing process with Bingham plastic characteristics. The fluid’s non-Newtonian characteristic created uncertainty in applying traditional hand calculation approaches to evaluate maximum and minimum pressures during a transient event. See how the engineering team used AFT Impulse to accurately model the unique fluid and system across a range of transient events and generated unbalanced forces to export for stress analysis.

2023 - LyondellBasell performed a hydraulic study to evaluate a 28% chemical process production increase. The study would use a calibrated AFT Fathom model to evaluate the existing infrastructure’s capacity and identify bottlenecks to eliminate. See how the engineer used a pump and system approach to increase capacity, use of features, and use of the model to reveal faults in the physical system. 

2023 - Avinashkumar Karre, Principal Process Engineer with Worley, performed a reliability study on a problematic cooling water system. Due to flow imbalance, some consumers were unable to meet duty requirements which limited production. Other consumers received excess flow, resulting in high velocities with accompanying vibration and equipment erosion. See how AFT Fathom was used to find solutions that increased efficiency and decreased energy and maintenance costs. 

2023 - Tata Consulting Engineers modeled a coal-fired Ultra Mega Power Plant cooling system to address poor pump operation while ensuring any modifications did not introduce waterhammer or surge concerns. See how an AFT Impulse model was calibrated and used to evaluate multiple cases in order to confirm adequate flow distribution, and transient pressure extremes, within five interconnected condenser units.

2023 - LyondellBasell performed a reliability study on a polymer slurry cooling system. The polymer slurry was used to maintain a stable temperature in a reactor, critical to maintaining product quality. This system had several reliability issues leading to downtime and associated maintenance costs to clean the piping. The existing system was unable to meet design requirements, potentially due to solids deposition not considered in the initial design. Read how AFT Fathom’s Settling Slurry (SSL) add-on module was used to identify and mitigate several slurry deposition areas. 

2023 - Caitlin Roos, a piping engineer with Hatch, was tasked with developing a model of a potash brine injection well mining system. Injection well mining pumps a solvent into porous rock formations to dissolve and extract mineral salts. The brine is then evaporated to isolate the mineral, in this case potash, which is typically used as fertilizer. Read how Roos used AFT Fathom model as a core design tool for the project to size pipes and equipment based on the exact mining schedule, measure experimental results, and estimate real-world results to reduce capital expenses by $9.8M.

2022 - An LNG terminal might have two to five loading arms for different purposes. In an emergency shutdown, flow through these arms must be suddenly halted by closing a sequence of valves, opening vent valves, and tripping transfer pumps. The sudden deceleration of flow results in pressure surge, potentially exceeding pipe design pressures and causing extreme pipe stress, further worsening an emergency. See how a research team at Lamar University evaluated the surge results from an LNG loading emergency shutdown.

2022 -  L&T Technology Services, was tasked with optimizing the fan hydraulics of a nitrogen closed loop in Frankfurt, Germany. The nitrogen loop is used to dry a slurry mixture, picking up process vapors and traces of solids in the process. By testing the selected fan across many different operating speeds, conditions, and requirements, engineers were able to develop a robust system approach to the engineering design without a massive manhour investment to analyze the complicated network.

2022 - Protton Synergy engineers were tasked with evaluating the surge potential of 9 HVAC circuits in an 11-story data center including chilled water, process water, condenser, condensate, and fuel oil circuits. Each system was made up of hundreds or thousands of pipes and junctions ranging from 2 to 60 inches (5 to 150 cm) in diameter. See why the Protton team credited AFT Impulse for its robust solver, which was able to converge nearly 3,000 pipes in a system without issue. 

2022 - Chris Bibby, of Wood PLC, assessed the water injection system of an offshore production platform expansion. The 4-pump system was flagged as an area of concern due to the long flowlines and high operating pressure of the injection system (more than 10,000 psi / 690 bar). See how he performed a transient analysis in AFT Impulse for pump start-up, controlled shutdown, emergency shutdown, and valve failure scenarios to determine if pressures or forces exceeded acceptable limits.

2022 - AFT Fathom helped engineers at Ingenero Technologies identify issues that plant data alone couldn’t reveal, which saved energy by eliminating unwanted resistance. A calibrated model allowed engineers to explore alternative proposals to meet the client’s design requirements while minimizing cost. See how AFT Fathom helped the team evaluate diverse scenarios to enhance flow with minimal hardware changes.

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.

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 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 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.

2017 - Jianmin (James) Yang, pipeline engineer at Access Pipeline, used AFT Impulse to model a crude oil terminal. The purpose of the model was to assess the overpressure risk during upset events, particularly pump trips. He built a creative sub-model to simultaneously model four different pump trip conditions.

2017 – Swanson Rink was tasked with increasing the airflow for the second floor remodel of a two-story office building. With the air handling units operating close to their maximum capacity, Rory Heim, mechanical engineer, used AFT Fathom to evaluate different strategies for satisfying the restricting design parameter. Heim submitted the project to AFT’s Platinum Pipe Award (PPA) contest and received the 2017 award for the Correlation to Test/Field Data category.

2017 - CB&I was tasked with performing a hydraulic analysis of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant expansion. The plant was built by CB&I in 1999, and the owner recently requested an increase in the send-out rate to the pipeline.

2017 - University of Alabama at Birmingham obtained an annual energy savings of $60,000 after Bernhard TME Engineering (TME) optimized the university’s district chilled water system. Brandon Smith, commissioning technician, and Wei Guo, energy engineer, at TME, used AFT Fathom to create a hydraulic model of the existing system. They ran simulations with the chilled water plants’ pumps in several different arrangements to determine the most efficient way to run the plants. Smith and Guo submitted the project to AFT’s Platinum Pipe Award (PPA) Contest and received the 2016 award for Operational Benefits and Sustainability category.

2015 - Agnieszka Markwica, engineer at Energoprojekt Katowice in Poland, used AFT Fathom to create a model using piping system data including technical documentation of all relevant fittings and instruments for a newly designed heat exchanger plant. Marwica submitted the project to AFT’s Platinum Pipe Award (PPA) contest and received an honorable mention in the Software Features and Model Creativity category.

2015 - William Allred, mechanical engineering associate at Reynolds, Smith & Hills, Inc. (RS&H), used AFT Impulse to design a complicated four level water deluge system to meet flow and timing requirements set in a fictitious situation. Allred submitted the project to AFT’s Platinum Pipe Award (PPA) Contest in 2015 and received an honorable mention for the Software Features and Model Creativity category.

2015 - Rory Heim, mechanical engineer at Swanson Rink, used AFT Fathom to model an air conditioning system for the conversion of a high rise office building into a multiuser, data center space. Heim submitted the project to AFT’s Platinum Pipe Award (PPA) contest and received an honorable mention in the Software Features and Model Creativity category.

2015 - Charles Williamson, P.E., senior engineering analyst at CB&I, used AFT Fathom and the XTS Module to determine an over pressurization problem in a fire pump system. AFT Fathom was able to reconstruct missing test data, allowing Williamson to simulate and analyze the system. Williamson submitted the project to AFT’s Platinum Pipe Award (PPA) contest and received the 2015 award for the Correlation to Test/Field Data category.

2015 - Nelius Joubert, senior operations specialist at Sasol, used AFT Fathom to model a complicated hydrocarbon separation plant in South Africa. The 355-pipe model helped identify various plant problems and was used to propose modifications that would enhance the plant’s performance. Joubert submitted the project to AFT’s Platinum Pipe Award (PPA) contest and received the 2015 award for the Software Features and Model Creativity category.