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Evaluate pressure relief system forces in existing installations | Hydrocarbon Processing | January 2013

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Evaluate pressure relief system forces in existing installations

01 .01 .201 3 | Sm ith, D., Smith & Burgess LLC, Houston, Tex as; White, J., Smith & Burgess LLC, Houston, Tex as; Frenk, B. , Frenk Water Technologies LLC, By ron, Illinois The purpose of this study is to limit the number of relief v alv es that require rigorous engineering calculations to determine the adequacy of the installation. Key words: Pressure relief dev ices control the amount and disposition of material during a process upset while simultaneously protecting process equipment from damage due to ov erpressure caused by the upset. The dev ices most commonly used for these purposes are pressure relief v alv es (PRV s) and pressure safety v alv es (PSV s). Quite a bit of engineering research, testing and analy sis has been performed to improv e assessment of relief v alv e suitability and the ability of associated installations to protect equipment from ov erpressure. One area that has less prescriptiv e requirements is analy sis of the structural integrity of the relief dev ice installation during the emergency ev ent. These installations are not designed for continuous flow, but rather sporadic flow, often at choked or sonic conditions. This article takes a brief look at the ex isting ev aluation of reaction forces for PRV s. It also performs a detailed baseline analy sis of ty pical installations to dev elop a screening tool for ev aluating an ex isting facility , and identifies the results when tested against an ex isting petrochemical facility . The purpose of this study is to limit the number of relief v alv es that require rigorous engineering calculations to determine the adequacy of the installation. Often, it is assumed that PRV installations are simple and easy to design. Howev er, practical ex perience has shown that PRV s, particularly dev ices that discharge to the atmosphere, are the most easily manipulated during the actual construction phase and often are not installed as they were intended. See Fig. 1 for two ex amples of installations that were likely not installed as designed. Clearly , not all ex isting relief v alv e installations meet the specifications recommended by industry practice.

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Evaluate pressure relief system forces in existing installations | Hydrocarbon Processing | January 2013

Fig. 1. Ex amples of PRV installations where little or no engineering piping design was performed or design was not followed.

Reaction force analy sis m ethodology During an ov erpressure ev ent, the discharge of a PRV imposes a load, referred to as a reaction force, on the collectiv e installation. This force creates a bending moment that is both a function of the quantity and state of the release and the phy sical lay out of the piping installation (i.e., the lev er arm created by the installation). The stress caused by the reaction force is propagated into and through the PRV and then into the inlet piping and v essel nozzle, unless the sy stem is properly supported. API reaction force analy sis. The American Petroleum Institute (API) prov ides guidance for determining pressure relief requirements for pressure relief dev ice installations. API 520, Part 2, states that PRV outlet piping should be independently supported and properly aligned. Stresses due to forced directional alignment of PRV piping are also mentioned; howev er, that topic will not be discussed in this article. The authors collectiv e practical ex perience has demonstrated that a significant portion of atmospheric relief dev ices do not hav e piping supports in place, as described in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2. Recreation of figure from API 520 for a ty pical relief v alv e installation. Note: The support should be as close as possible to the centerline of the v ent pipe. F = the reaction force, and A = the cross-sectional area of discharge pipe.
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Evaluate pressure relief system forces in existing installations | Hydrocarbon Processing | January 2013

API 520, Part 2, prov ides a basis calculation for the reaction forces in the ev ent of v apor or two-phase releases directly to the atmosphere. There is no discussion in this section of the reaction forces dev eloped during a liquid release. Furthermore, no guidance is presented with respect to apply ing these results or determining if an installation is acceptable; instead, the burden is placed on the designer to ensure that the installation is appropriate. While this may be reasonable for the design of new facilities, ev aluating the adequacy of ex isting facilities becomes much more complicated. The formulas from API 520, Part 2, are listed below for relief dev ices discharging to the atmosphere: API 520, Part 2, 4.4.1 .1 : Customary units for v apor relief reaction forces:

(1 ) API 520, Part 2, 4.4.1 .2: US customary units for two-phase relief reaction forces:

(2) where: F = Reaction force at the point of discharge to the atmosphere, pound force (lbf) k = Ratio of specific heats (CP/CV ) at the outlet conditions W = Flow of any gas or v apor, pound mass (lbm)/hr CP = Specific heat at constant pressure CV = Specific heat at constant v olume T = Temperature at the outlet, R M = Molecular weight of the process fluid A = Area of the outlet at the point of discharge, in. 2 P = Static pressure within the outlet at the point of discharge, psig x = Weight fraction v apor at ex it conditions g = V apor density at ex it conditions, lbm/ft 3 l = Liquid density at ex it conditions, lbm/ft 3 Pe = Absolute pressure at pipe ex it, psia Pa = Absolute ambient pressure, psig. DIERS reaction force analy sis. The Design Institute for Emergency Relief Sy stems (DIERS) prov ides similar guidance for the consideration of reaction forces and the determination of the acceptability of a relief dev ice installation. Additional recommendations are prov ided for a suggested piping lay out to av oid ex cessiv e lev er arms, as recreated in Fig. 3. In this illustration, the sy stem on the left has significantly more stress due to the increased lev er arm and direction of discharge when compared to the sy stem on the right.

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Fig. 3. Ev en the smallest modification in piping design can hav e a significant effect on the resulting reaction forces. Additionally , emphasis is placed on the importance of ev aluating the reaction forces for all credible ov erpressure contingencies, not simply the controlling contingency . This is important because the phy sical properties are not alway s the same, and, in some cases, the controlling contingency for sizing may be a v apor stream, while the controlling case for the reaction forces may be a two-phase stream. Reaction force case study analy sis A piping sy stem may respond far differently to a dy namic load than to a static load of the same magnitude. Static loads are those applied slowly enough so that the piping sy stem has time to react and internally distribute the loads, thereby remaining in equilibrium. With dy namic loadsthose that change quickly the piping sy stem may not hav e time to internally distribute the loads, so forces and mov ements are not alway s resolv ed, resulting in unbalanced and potentially concentrated loads and pipe mov ement. The ty pical action of relief v alv e v enting is an impulse load, where the flowrate and associated forces ramp up from nominally zero to some v alue, remain relativ ely constant for the duration of the release, and then ramp down to zero again. When the relief v alv e opens, the discharge fluid creates a jet force that acts on the piping sy stem. This force increases from zero to its full v alue ov er a time frame similar to the opening time of the v alv e. The relief v alv e remains open until sufficient fluid is v ented to reliev e the ov erpressure situation. When the v alv e closes, the reduction in flow corresponds to the loss of the jet force ov er the closing time of the v alv e. Multiple relief v alv e piping configurations were ex amined for both static and dy namic conditions, using analy sis software. The stresses calculated during the analy sis were checked against the allowable stresses per American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) standards. Additionally , the analy sis was used to determine if a flange leak was likely . In all cases, the dy namic condition was determined to be the gov erning condition for the structural integrity of the piping sy stem. The leakage check ex amined the tendency of the flanges to separate under the applied piping loads. ASME B31 .3 does not directly address flange leakage. The purpose of this analy sis was to determine piping failure
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Evaluate pressure relief system forces in existing installations | Hydrocarbon Processing | January 2013

and not flange leaks. From ex tensiv e tests, It has been determined that, ev en under unusually sev ere bending stresses, flange assemblies did not fail in the flange proper, by fracture of the bolts or by leakage across the joint face. Structural failure occurred almost inv ariably in the pipe adjacent to the flange, and, in rare instances, across an unusually weak attachment weld. Leakage well in adv ance of failure was observ ed only in the case of threaded flanges. 1 These findings, which suggest that the structural integrity of the piping is the major area of concern for any stress analy sis and should be considered ov er flange leakage, serv e as the basis for these ev aluations. Many different process connections hav e been observ ed in field installations: Welding-reducing tees, weld/thread o-lets, and unreinforced stub-in connections. Unreinforced stub-in connections result in the highest ratio of calculated to code-allowed stresses, followed by o-lets and then welding-reducing tees for the same relief sy stem-applied piping loads. The model used in the current ev aluations has been confined to welding-reducing tees. The allowable code stresses are below the y ield and well below the tensile, as indicated in T able 1, for commonly used carbon steel materials. The net result is that there is a 1 9% to 24% safety factor between the code allowable for occasional loading and the y ield point where the material begins to fail. The relief v alv e models were ev aluated to establish relief pressures at which the calculated stresses were within 5% of each of the allowable occasional, y ield and tensile stresses.

Modeling details. The relief v alv es were modeled as an open discharge, with a v ertical pipe discharging directly to the atmosphere. As shown in Fig. 4, the process connection is mounted on a pipe header with a welding-reducing tee. This arrangement was chosen to prov ide a more realistic representation of ty pical installations together with the inherent flex ibility of the tee/header connection. The v ent pipe is the same diameter as the outlet connection on the v alv e and is unsupported at the elbow, with a 6-foot-long v ertical v ent pipe.

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Fig. 4. Sample of the model basis.

Another software program was used to determine the phy sical properties along the v ent pipe required to calculate the thrust and momentum forces (Fig. 5 ): Av erage v elocity along the v ent pipe Av erage temperature across the outlet of the v ent pipe Av erage v elocity at the elbow.

Fig. 5. Sample of the v elocity profile output. The relief v alv e was modeled as an orifice at the end of a conv erging nozzle. The orifice was set to produce the capacity calculated by a relief v alv e analy sis for the giv en inlet conditions using the certified orifice size. The following assumptions were made regarding the analy sis: The process fluid was v apor The manufacturers certified orifice diameters (from the National Board of Boiler and Pressure V essel Inspectors Relief Dev ice Certification NB-1 8) were used in place of standard API orifice diameters to prov ide more realistic discharge flow V alv e opening and closing time was 8.0 milliseconds, and v enting would last for one second; these numbers are specific to the v alv e manufacturer, and they appear to be ty pical throughout the relief v alv e industry Wind loadings were not considered All piping was considered to be schedule 40 carbon steel Relief v alv e inlet flanges were specified as required for process considerations
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Evaluate pressure relief system forces in existing installations | Hydrocarbon Processing | January 2013

Relief v alv e outlet flanges were specified to American National Standards Institute (ANSI) RF 1 50. Screening study and results The objectiv e of dev eloping the screening tool was to prov ide a fairly quick method to identify relief v alv es that were likely to need either support or more detailed analy sis to v erify the adequacy of the ex isting installation. For the purpose of simplification, sev eral assumptions were made, as described below: All relief v alv es discharging to a closed disposal sy stem are adequately supported for an indiv idual release Relief v alv e installations that discharge to a closed sy stem are, by definition, supported by at least the point of discharge, and the purpose of this screening is to identify relief v alv es that require supportnot to ev aluate the adequacy of ex isting supports Due to the complex ity of a supported common disposal sy stem, these sy stems are ex cluded from the scope of this study All liquid and two-phase relief contingencies require detailed analy sis Water hammer is a much bigger concern for liquid and two-phase releases than for reaction forces, and is therefore an item to be ev aluated outside of reaction forces Additionally , the dy namic effects of flashing flow create far too many v ariables to include in a simplistic screening All nonstandard PRV sizes require detailed analy sis While this statement may not be true for ev ery installation, for the purposes of dev eloping an automated tool to identify relief v alv es that may need detailed engineering, the obv ious decision is to flag any installation that falls out of the normal range For the purposes of this study , the standard was defined by the flanged relief v alv e sizes listed in API 526 and shown in Fig. 6.

Fig. 6. Relief v alv e size configurations ev aluated as per API 526. PRV installations can be characterized as either ty pical or complex . Since the generic screening methodology was performed using a ty pical PRV configuration (as seen in Fig. 4 ), some method of identify ing configurations with more complex piping had to be identified. For the purposes of this study , any piping configuration containing more than change of direction fitting (elbow, 45 bend, branch tee, etc.) was considered to be complex . Fig. 3 was used as the basis for this assumption. PRV s installed and sized for only the ex ternal fire contingency will not require a reaction force ev aluation. While this may seem counterintuitiv e, as ex ternal fire is the prev ailing ov erpressure contingency in pressure relief sy stem design, it is proposed that a PRV installation cannot be deemed adequate by a reaction force analy sis in the ev ent of an ex ternal fire.
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Evaluate pressure relief system forces in existing installations | Hydrocarbon Processing | January 2013

The heating effect on the relief dev ice from a fire is unknown, and it can be more significant for the relief dev ice installation (particularly the outlet piping and the v alv e body itself) than the stresses caused by the flowrate. It is proposed that the failure of a relief v alv e installation due to reaction forces is more likely to be controlled by the reduction in tensile strength of the installation due to the heat input, than to be controlled by the sy stem design. PRV s installed and sized for only the liquid hy draulic ex pansion contingency will not require a reaction force ev aluation. Liquid hy draulic ex pansion cases are often nominal rates for which a small thermal PRV is installed. In many cases, the PRV possesses a capacity far greater than the required relief load. Additionally , the non-steady -state nature of a thermal ex pansion ev ent tends to result in the unsustained releases that do not dev elop ty pical fluid flow characteristics. Taking these factors into account, it was determined that hy draulic ex pansion scenarios do not require pipe stress screening. Qualitativ e screening. The screening study was div ided into two phases, one being qualitativ e screening against assumptions, as set forth abov e, and the other being against the criteria set forth in the base-case study for each relief v alv e size. The qualitativ e step was performed stepwise, as a discussion tree, as represented in T able 2.

The qualitativ e screening step identified 32 installations that are acceptable as is, 45 that require more detailed analy sis (including the potential rev iew of why two-phase/liquid releases are being sent to the atmosphere), and 1 1 2 installations that are not cov ered by this screening. The second stage of the screening was dev eloped based on generic pressure relief dev ice installations. The intention was to draw a line separating PRV installations into three categories: Installations predicted to be acceptable as installed Installations that will require detailed engineering analy sis to determine the adequacy of the installation Installations that are ex pected to require proper piping support if a detailed engineering analy sis is performed; the results of this screening are shown in T able 3. This screening was performed against all 1 89 relief dev ice installations rather than the remaining 1 1 2 from the qualitativ e screening, due to the fact that three possible results ex ist rather than the two prev iously used. A relief v alv e installation that was flagged as needing a detailed analy sis in the qualitativ e step may be identified as a dev ice that is predicted to require support irrespectiv e of a detailed analy sis. Additionally , a relief dev ice sized only for fire may be identified as an installation requiring support, ev en before the effects of temperature change can be ex amined. To perform this screening, the ex isting PRV installations were div ided into ty pical and complex groups, as described prev iously . For ty pical installations, a threshold v alue of 90% was used when comparing the
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installation to screening tool-generated stresses for each relief v alv e size. This means that relief v alv es hav ing a relief pressure within 90% of the threshold for occasional loading were flagged as requiring detailed engineering analy sis. Similarly , relief pressures ex ceeding 90% of the threshold for y ield stress were flagged as likely requiring support, regardless of the detailed analy sis. For complex PRV installations, the threshold v alue was lowered to 7 0% of the occasional loading and y ield stress limits, respectiv ely . The results of the quantitativ e screening, shown in T able 3, indicate that most of the v alv es predicted to require support (28 of the 37 identified) fall into the category of those predicted to ex ceed the y ield stress. Therefore, these v alv es were identified as installations that do not require detailed analy sis to determine if support is required. Ov erall results. The results of both screening studies were combined to create an actionable list of items for ensuring the phy sical integrity of the PRV installations, as shown in T able 4. For the facility studied, the aggregate of the two screenings predicted that 28 pressure relief installations would require support (ev en if a detailed engineering study was performed), and an additional 34 PRV installations would require a more detailed engineering study to determine the adequacy of the installations. Ov erall, more than 30% of the relief v alv es studied were found to require action.

A sample was taken from each of the three categories, and detailed analy ses were performed to v erify these results. Of those samples, all relief dev ice installations predicted to require support did indeed require support to av oid ex ceeding the y ield stress. Likewise, all sampled installations predicted to be adequate were found to be adequate. Of the sampled dev ices predicted to require detailed engineering analy sis, all but one ex ceeded the y ield stress, and that installation did ex ceed the allowable stress. The purpose of this study was to prov ide a solid screening tool to prev ent the cost of performing a detailed engineering ev aluation on ev ery relief dev ice installation, and the end result met this objectiv e. In some cases, it may be more cost-effectiv e to simply support PRV installations for which a detailed study is suggested, rather than to perform the detailed study . Recom m endations Ov erpressure protection analy sis has ev olv ed significantly since the inception of the process safety management (PSM) standard, but the mechanical stress applied to the piping during ov erpressure ev ents appears to hav e been, for the most part, ov erlooked. Criteria for identify ing pressure relief dev ice
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installations that may ex ceed allowable stress lev els were dev eloped from these sy stems. These criteria were then ev aluated against a petrochemical facility s pressure relief sy stems and benchmarked for v alidity as a first-pass tool to identify installations potentially requiring phy sical supports. For the facility studied, approx imately two-thirds of the PRV installations were predicted to be adequate with respect to reaction forces, with the remaining installations being broken into two categories: those requiring support and those requiring further analy sis. This prov es that, in practice, a significant percentage of PRV installations do not meet the desired structural integrity with regard to reaction forces. This study demonstrates a screening tool that allows plants to focus resources on the relief v alv e installations most likely to fail due to reaction forces. HP LIT ERAT URE CIT ED
1 Peng, L.-C. and T.-L. Peng, Pipe Stress Engineering, ASME, New Y ork, 2009.

T he authors

Jason White, PE, is a senior process engineer with Smith & Burgess LLC, a process safety consulting firm based in Houston, Tex as. Mr. White has sev en y ears of ex perience in PSM compliance, specializing in relief sy stems design and analy sis for the refining, natural gas and petrochemical industries. He receiv ed BS and MS degrees in chemical engineering from the Univ ersity of Missouri, and is a licensed professional engineer in the state of Tex as.

Dustin Sm ith, PE, is the co-founder and principal consultant of Smith & Burgess LLC, a process safety consulting firm based in Houston, Tex as. As a consultant, Mr. Smith has ex tensiv e ex perience with helping refineries and petrochemical facilities maintain compliance with the PSM standard. He has more than a decade of ex perience in relief sy stems design and PSM compliance. His ex perience includes both domestic and international projects. Mr. Smith is a chemical engineering graduate of Tex as A&M Univ ersity and a licensed professional engineer in Tex as.

Bill Frenk is a mechanical engineer and the owner of Frenk Water Technologies LLC, a mechanical engineering consulting firm based in By ron, Illinois. He is also a consultant for Smith & Burgess LLC. Mr. Frenk has ex tensiv e ex perience utilizing Caesar II software in both onshore and offshore applications. He receiv ed a BS degree in mechanical engineering from Southern Illinois Univ ersity .

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