Chemical & Process Technology: Depressuring Flow - Quick Manual M...

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Depressuring Flow - Quick Manual Method

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How to apply valve equation in HYSYS

Depressuring ?
High pressure and moderate/low temperature operation
are common in oil and gas industry. High pressure
system with large vessels will lead to large inventory
and it significantly increases hazardous level to
personnel and assets...

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Depressuring system is provided in Oil and gas, Gas & LNG plant,
etc to evacuate the inventory from process system as fast as
possible so that the reduced internal pressure stresses is kept
below the rupture stress. This has been discussed in
"Depressuring within 15 minutes no longer applicable ?".
Nevertheless, quick depressuring may lead to other problem such
as low temperature embrittlement, excessive noise and
vibration, etc. Depressure a high pressure would lead to low
temperature of depressured system and failure due to low
temperature embrittlement. Higher the depressuring rate, lower the
temperature can be experienced by depressured system. Thus, the
restriction orifice (RO) downstream of Blowdown Valve (BDV) in
depressuring system primarily is to limit flow so that the temperature will not drop below
the allowable lowest temperature limit of material. This has been discussed in "Don't
misunderstood depressuring".

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Although depressuring shall be implemented within the shortest time possible, excessive
depressuring may potentially lead to damage to equipment such as compressor seal, solid
bed, etc. Thus, there are two type of depressuring as discussed in "Controlled and
Non-controlled Type Depressuring". Nevertheless, it is emphasized again here,
depressuring system shall be designed to bring plant to safe level without any tolerance.
Many depressuring systems are designed to depressure the system within 15 minutes
follow recommendation in API 521. Nevertheless, one shall take note that the 15 minutes
is sort of arbitrary and may be good for some system and configuration. Thus, in most
recent API STD 521, the requirement has slightly changed where a depressuring system
shall be designed such that the stress induced by internal pressure of a system is lower
than stress allowable by the system. This may lead to shorter depressuring time as
discussed in "Depressuring within 15 minutes no longer applicable ?".
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Depressuring can be conducted using simple depressuring
module in process simulator such HYSYS, PRO-II, etc. One shall
understood there are limitation and accuracy issue in above
mentioned depressuring modules and shall be used with care.
There are other depressuring simulator such as LNGDYN by
TECHNIP, BLOWDOWN by Imperial College, etc which are
calculated rigorously and tested with real plant data. It is always
advisable to use these simulator for specific case.
Assumption
In this post, a manual depressuring method is introduced. This
method is first introduced by Grote and are derived base on
following assumptions :

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i) Critical flow throughout entire depressuring process

ii) Constant mass flow throughout entire depressuring process
iii) System being depressured is maintained as gaseous throughout entire depressuring
process
iv) Constant temperature, molecular weight and compressibility
Methodology
Following is the derivation of the manual equation.

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Concluding Remark
Equation [5] may be used for manual depressuring if a system inventory (initial mass, M 0),
depressuring time (t), initial (P0) and final pressure (P) are are known. One shall check the
assumptions are valid before it is used. This equation may be used as quick method to

August 2012

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http://webwormcpt.blogspot.com/2009/01/depressuring-quick-manual-m...

determine the depressuring flowrate for quick estimate, however it is not recommended
during detailed design.

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How to apply valve equation in HYSYS Depressuring ?
Why Restriction Orifice is some distance from Blowdown valve ?
Labels: Depressurization, HYSYS
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posted by Webworm, 4:41 PM

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