Vessel depressurization modeling

• Flare system
– Most pressure vessels on topsides must be operated under the allowable
pressure. The overpressure would cause damage of vessels, leak of
hydrocarbons, fire or explosion.
– Depressurization: A process of rapidly removing the fluid in the pressure
vessel when an overpressure occurs in the pressure vessel.
• ex) API: Decrease to 50% of maximum allowance working pressure(MAWP) or 690kPa
– The discharged gas is flared.

(New York Times,

2007.10.13)
Problems
• One of the most big and long piping on an
offshore platform.
Big cost impact
• If it fails, the hydrocarbon is leaked
Big safety impact, a conservative design is required.
• Therefore, if the initial design has problems,
Critical for whole project

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Depressurization analysis
• Relief load Calculation
Maximum heat Maximum discharge Relief load
Fire case Valve sizing
influx rate calculation

As the valve size increases, the size of flare system also increases.

• Low temperature analysis

Expansion with Low

Adiabatic Temperature drop to Vessel material
lack of heat temperature
Case DBTT property
influx analysis
※ DBTT: Ductile to Brittle Transition Temperature

Requires stronger material for vessel and flare system.

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Limitation of some commercial software
• Comparison with experimental results (Haque et al.,1990) and
simulation results of Aspen HYSYS v8.8 Depressuring Utility
– Initial condition: 150bar, 290K, depressurization to atmospheric pressure

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Phenomena during blowdown
• The pressure inside the vessel rapidly drops, resulting in
phase transition inside.
• Because it is too rapid, the equilibrium assumption inside
the vessel is not valid.
– Pressure drops due to discharge
– Expansion of the fluid in the vessel
– Temperature drop due to the expansion
– Liquid droplet nucleation and condensation
– Vaporization of liquid due to hotter wall temperature
– Repeated liquid pooling and boiling
– Continuous temperature drop of vessel wall
contacting liquid
Main Algorithm
- The purpose of this model is to obtain the thermodynamic properties
and conditions of the fluid and the wall which change with sudden
pressure drop.

- The pressure decreasing at a fixed rated for each step, the properties and
time interval.
𝑷𝒊 = 𝟎. 𝟗𝟓𝑷𝒊−𝟏

- Coexisting in the pressure vessels, gas and liquid phases become non-
equilibrium. → Temperature of phases is different → Material and energy
exchange occur between two phases.

- Definite ‘evaporated liquid’ and ‘condensed vapor’ calculated by flash

calculation of each phase at any phase.

- Main Assumption
∙ Equilibrium inside liquid or gas
∙ Ignore vaporization and condensation time at each pressure stage
∙ Expansion with Polytropic path
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 Main Algorithm
Calculate the pressure at
Assume time interval (∆𝒕′ ), Calculate composition and amount of
current stage
Entropies for each phases (𝒔𝒁𝟏 ′ , 𝒔𝒁𝟐 ′ ) evaporated liquid according to Ps-flash
𝑷𝒊 = 𝟎. 𝟗𝟓𝑷𝒊−𝟏

Update Entropies of Zone 2 (𝒔𝒁𝟐 ) Calculate heat transfer of zone 2, the

Calculate composition and amount of 𝑖
𝑇𝑧2 𝑠𝐿𝑖−1 𝑁𝐿𝑖−1 + 𝑠𝐶𝑉
𝑖−1 𝑖−1
𝑁𝐶𝑉 + 𝑖
𝑄𝑖𝑛,𝑧2 temperature of the wall contacted
Condensed vapor according to Ps-flash 𝑠𝑧2 = 𝑖 𝑖−1
𝑇𝑧2 𝑁𝐿 + 𝑁𝐶𝑉 𝑖−1 with zone 2

Calculate discharged Calculate heat transfer of zone 1, Update Entropies of Zone 2 (𝒔𝒁𝟐 )
Calculate time
flow rate through the the temperature of the wall 𝑖
𝑇𝑧1 𝑠𝑉𝑖−1 𝑁𝑉𝑖−1 + 𝑠𝐸𝐿
𝑖 𝑖
𝑁𝐸𝐿 𝑖
+ 𝑄𝑖𝑛,𝑧1
𝑠𝑧1 = interval(∆𝒕)
valve contacted with zone 1 𝑖
𝑇𝑧1 𝑁𝑉𝑖−1 + 𝑁𝐸𝐿
𝑖

Yes No
∆𝒕 = ∆𝒕′ &
Go to the next pressure stage
𝒔𝒁𝟐 = 𝒔𝒁𝟐 ′ & 𝒔𝒁𝟏 = 𝒔𝒁𝟏 ′ ?

𝐷𝑖
𝑃 𝑖−1∗ → 𝑃 𝑖∗ Zone 1 Equilibrium
𝐷𝑖
𝑖 Heat & mass
𝑉 𝑖−1 𝑃𝑖 𝑠𝑧2 Flash 𝑉 𝑖−1 𝑉 𝑖−1 𝐸𝐿𝑖 𝑖
𝑃𝑖 𝑠𝑧1 Flash Discharge 𝑉𝑖 𝐶𝑉 𝑖
𝑉 𝑖−1 𝐶𝑉 𝑖−1 transfer 𝑉𝑖 𝐶𝑉 𝑖

𝐿𝑖−1 𝐿𝑖−1 𝐶𝑉 𝑖−1 𝐿𝑖 𝐸𝐿𝑖 𝐿𝑖 𝐿𝑖 𝐿𝑖

Zone 2 Equilibrium 7
Heat transfer between air and wall
• Heat transfer between external air and outer wall
– Consider natural convection only

𝒏𝒂𝒕
𝟎. 𝟑𝟖𝟕𝑹𝒂𝟏/𝟔
𝑵𝒖 = 𝟎. 𝟖𝟐𝟓 +
𝟏 + 𝟎. 𝟓𝟗𝟐/𝑷𝒓 𝟗/𝟏𝟔 𝟖/𝟐𝟕

(Churchill & Chu, 1975)

𝑵𝒖𝒏𝒂𝒕 = 𝟎. 𝟐𝟕𝑹𝒂𝟏/𝟒 𝟏𝟎𝟓 ≤ 𝑹𝒂 ≤ 𝟏𝟎𝟏𝟎

(Cengel & Ghajar, 2011)

𝑵𝒖𝒏𝒂𝒕 = 𝟎. 𝟓𝟒𝑹𝒂𝟏/𝟒 𝟏𝟎𝟒 ≤ 𝑹𝒂 ≤ 𝟏𝟎𝟕

𝑵𝒖𝒏𝒂𝒕 = 𝟎. 𝟏𝟓𝑹𝒂𝟏/𝟒 𝟏𝟎𝟕 ≤ 𝑹𝒂 ≤ 𝟏𝟎𝟏𝟏

(Cengel & Ghajar, 2011)

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 Heat transfer between gas and wall
• Heat transfer between the internal vapor and the
wall contacting vapor
– Consider combined convection of natural convection
and forced convection
Nusselt number Nusselt number
for natural convection for forced convection
Side of the wall Side of the vessel
(Churchill & Chu’s Correlation) (Gnielinski’s Correlation)

𝟎. 𝟑𝟖𝟕𝑹𝒂𝟏/𝟔 𝒇/𝟖 𝑹𝒆 − 𝟏𝟎𝟎𝟎 𝑷𝒓

𝑵𝒖 𝒏𝒂𝒕
= 𝟎. 𝟖𝟐𝟓 + 𝑵𝒖𝒇𝒐𝒓 =
𝟗/𝟏𝟔
𝟖/𝟐𝟕 𝟏. 𝟎𝟕 + 𝟏𝟐. 𝟕 𝒇/𝟖 𝟎.𝟓 𝑷𝒓𝟎.𝟔𝟕 − 𝟏
𝟏 + 𝟎. 𝟓𝟗𝟐/𝑷𝒓

Top/bottom of the vessel

Top/bottom of the wall
(Churchill & Ozoe’s Correlation)
(McAdams’ Correlation)
𝑵𝒖𝒏𝒂𝒕 = 𝟎. 𝟐𝟕𝑹𝒂𝟏/𝟒 𝟏𝟎𝟓 ≤ 𝑹𝒂 ≤ 𝟏𝟎𝟏𝟎 𝒇𝒐𝒓
𝟏. 𝟏𝟐𝟖𝑷𝒓𝟎.𝟓 𝑹𝒆𝟎.𝟓
𝑵𝒖 =
𝒏𝒂𝒕 𝟏/𝟒 𝟒 𝟕 𝟏 + 𝟎. 𝟎𝟒𝟔𝟖/𝑷𝒓 𝟎.𝟔𝟕 𝟎.𝟐𝟓
𝑵𝒖 = 𝟎. 𝟓𝟒𝑹𝒂 𝟏𝟎 ≤ 𝑹𝒂 ≤ 𝟏𝟎 𝟏/𝟑
𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒃 𝒏𝒂𝒕 𝟑 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝟑
𝑵𝒖𝒏𝒂𝒕 = 𝟎. 𝟏𝟓𝑹𝒂𝟏/𝟒 𝟏𝟎𝟕 ≤ 𝑹𝒂 ≤ 𝟏𝟎𝟏𝟏 𝑵𝒖 = 𝑵𝒖 + 𝑵𝒖 9
 Heat transfer between liquid and wall
• Pool boiling phenomenon
– The boiling phenomenon that the temperature of the inner wall
contacted with liquid is higher than the boiling point of the
internal liquid.
– Nucleate boiling is considered in this model.

Nucleate boiling

Critical heat flux

Transition boiling

Film boiling

Shiro Nukiyama. (1934). The Maximum and Minimum Values of the Heat Q Transmitted
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from Metal to Boiling Water under Atmospheric Pressure
Wolverine tube, Inc. Engineering Data Book Ⅲ
Simulation results verification
• The result was compared with the previous studies and commercial
software for verification.
– Previous studies: BLOWDOWN (Haque, Richardson et al., 1992),
BLOWSIM (Mahgerefteh and Wong, 1999), BLOW (Speranza and Terezi,
2005), VBsim (D’Aleesandro and Valero et al., 2015)
– Commercial softwares: HYSYS v.9, VessFire1.2
<Pressure changes in the pressure vessel over time during depressurization>
Case 1 Case 2 Case 3

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Simulation results verification
Internal vapor temperature

Case 1 Case 2 Case 3

Internal liquid temperature

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Simulation results verification

<Temperature changes of the wall in the pressure vessel over time during depressurization>

Wall contacted with vapor

Wall contacted with liquid

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Future works
• Extension of these works to tail piping, flare
header, and flare system.

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