The lowdown on safer blowdown
15 Jan 2000
Rapid depressurisation, or blowdown, of high-pressure vessels, such as in natural gas transmission systems or between offshore platforms, is a hazardous operation. Graham Saville and Stephen Richardson have developed a computer program called Blowdown to simulate the blowdown of systems containing hydrocarbons.
The program predicts pressures, temperatures, multi-phase compositions and rates of efflux, all as functions of time. It has been validated by comparison with a large number of `live' experimental measurements, mostly at full-scale.
Blowdown predicts minimum average bulk fluid and wall temperatures to +/-3oC, enabling materials of construction to be chosen.
Much of the work on Blowdown was sponsored by Shell and the program has been used by many oil and gas companies to simulate depressurisation systems.
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