With the goal of making process safety a more mainstream activity, DNV Software and SimSci-Esscor have developed a link between Phast FX and Visual Flow. The link allows process engineers to quickly and easily estimate a wide range of flammable effects during design work.
Phast FX , a subset of Phast, contains the major flammable including jet flame, pool fire, BLEVE, and the explosion models.
Visual Flow provides engineers with a state-of-the-art tool for designing, documenting, and modelling safety systems, pressure relief networks, and general plant fluid-flow systems. Applications include relief networks, systems containing any configuration of multiple flares, relief valves, knock-out drums, and loops.
The process industries are being challenged by regulatory agencies to check the safe operation of their plants. A standard requirement of this assessment is often a comprehensive model of flare relief systems of the plant with full documentation of network structure, control systems/strategy, and maximum relief rates capacity. Visual Flow is designed to address this need, and improves the productivity of teams assigned to complete this task either as part of a new design, a plant revamp, or an on-going operation. With the link between Phast FX and Visual Flow, users can pass stream information at the base of the flare to Phast FX for initialising one of its jet flame routines. Additionally, users can make estimations for other flammable scenarios including pool fire or BLEVE, or a calculation of various vapour cloud explosion scenarios.
The key benefit for Visual Flow users is that they can now quickly and accurately consider key process safety issues early in the design phase. Visual Flow users will also tap into the collective process safety experience of thousands of Phast users worldwide. By combining the expertise of SimSci-Esscor and DNV Software, process engineers will achieve:
- Safer designs and operation
- Faster regulatory documentation and compliance
- More efficient flare network modelling
- Reduced capital cost
- Reduced operating cost