Inside VMG - July 2013 [News - Articles - Courses - Webinars] - Virtual Materials Group, Inc.

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1 Wednesday, July 10, 2013 VMGSim Courses Hands on Introduction to VMGSim August 28, 2013 and November 20, Calgary, AB, Canada This one-day course provides process engineers an introduction to VMGSim s features and capabilities using a series of tutorials and demonstrations. See full description and topics covered in the course here To register or for more information, please us at courses@virtualmaterials.com Overview of VMGSim September 11 & 12, 2013 Houston, TX, USA This two-day VMGSim course is a hands-on course where attendees will spend a significant amount of time running VMGSim. You are guided through the creation of a series of typical simulation case examples in VMGSim covering gas processing, petrochemicals, crude oil characterization and fractionation, gas treating with amines and sulfur recovery. The final training problem set will be determined after course signup is complete. See full description and topics covered in the course here Upcoming Events Webinars Advanced Flowsheeting with VMGSim: Thursday, Aug. 15, 2013 Sneak Peak of VMGSim 8.0: Thursday, Sept. 12, 2013 Register Here Courses Hands on Introduction to VMGSim Calgary Aug 28th Overview of VMGSim Houston Sept 11 & 12 Details... Connect with us: To register or for more information, please us at gerald@virtualmaterials.com VMGSim Webinars These webinar series are designed to help new and seasoned VMGSim users learn about new features and to perform common tasks in a faster and more efficient way. Please feel free to pass this onto colleagues who may be interested. The schedule and topics for the next two VMGSim Webinars are: Time Page 1 of 14

2 Date (MDT) Topic Thursday, August 15, 2013 Thursday, September 12, 2013 Register here 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM Advanced Flowsheeting with VMGSim Sneak Peak of VMGSim 8.0 Sales Meeting Recap Coming Together It's amazing how fast we've grown in just a few months with the additions of great sales representatives from South Korea, the Middle East, and Malaysia. We were pleased to get together last month at our annual sales meeting at VMG headquarters in Calgary. It was great to finally be in the same room, setting goals for the future and strategizing for how to make the upcoming year productive and successful for VMG and rewarding for our customers. What we do as a team is continue providing our customers with the innovative products and the excellent support they've come to expect from VMG. Ultimately, these annual sales meetings benefit our customers in the end. With the launch of the latest version of VMGSim coming this fall, we're on our way to achieving these goals. Page 2 of 14

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5 Thank you to all who attended our 2013 Sales Meeting. Out & About VMG Presenting at the Separation Technology Conference in Japan Hideo Iketani, from VMG Japan, will be giving a 40-minute presentation on September 13, 2013 at the Separation Technology Conference at Nippon University in Japan. His presentation will include highlights of the ongoing VMG special reactor developments including: Fuel Cells, Heavy Feed Cracking Furnaces (with PIONA), Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, Gasification, VCM, and Claus. Because this conference will include presentations from the majority of different simulators available to the attendees, including A+, UNISim, HYSYS, Pro/II, ChemCAD, gproms and Visual Modeler, this will be a great opportunity to showcase for the audience and attendees their differences and why ultimately VMGSim is superior. Continued Innovation and Collaboration At VMG we're always working together with our partners in the industry and in academia to innovate and push the boundaries of what process simulation software can do. Recently, Marco Satyro, one of the original founders of VMG, with John M. Shaw from the University of Alberta and Harvey W. Yarranton from the University of Calgary, collaborated to develop a new method to estimate oil and water mutual solubilities, allowing to better estimate the amount of water side draws from crude distillation towers and to improve the design of water treatment systems. This feature will be in the latest release of VMGSim this fall. Here is the abstract of the article: A Practical Method for the Estimation of Oil and Water Mutual Solubilities. Page 5 of 14

6 Characterizing and Installing Crude Oils in VMGSim: Cn Compositional Analysis - Examples Herbert Loria Calgary The Carbon Number (Cn) Compositional Analysis technique in the oil environment of VMGSim characterizes the plus fraction of reservoir fluids when a compositional analysis is available. This technique involves the use of a versatile model equation to estimate the molar distributions and molecular weights of the plus fraction. This characterization method allows a better reservoir oil and gas representation when compared to other proposed techniques (Gamma distribution or Pedersen Exponential distribution). The objective of this article is to show an example on how to use the Cn Compositional Analysis option in the oil environment from VMGSim. Cn Compositional Analysis Example Sometimes oil analyses have no TBP data and the compositional analysis goes only up to certain carbon number, while the remaining fraction is lumped into a plus fraction. The following example will guide the user to characterize crude oil analyses with these characteristics. Oil Compositional Analysis The following table is a C7+ Compositional Analysis from a crude oil, the analysis contains data up to C6, including light ends and the composition and properties of the C7+ fraction. Table 1 Crude Oil Compositional Analysis Assay Component Mass % Molecular Weight Liquid Density at 60F (kg/m3) Methane Ethane Propane Iso-Butane n-butane Iso-Pentane n-pentane C C Page 6 of 14

7 To start the characterization, add the light ends defined in Table 1 to the selected property package. Note that C 6 is not defined as n-hexane; hence it will be added as part of the compositional analysis. Once the pure components are added to the property package, open the Oil Characterization environment. In the Assays section, click the New button. Using the dropdown button on the top right corner, change the active unit set to SI. Click on the Cn Compositional Analysis radio button and the characterization procedure is ready to start. Notice that the Range Set is automatically set to SingleRange, this can be modified and will be saved once the oil has been cut. In the Light Ends tab, check the Light Ends box, set the Light End Basis to Mass% and enter the light ends data. Note the Use LE in Bulk Oil Props check box remains blank, since the light end properties will not be taken into account in the properties of the light ends free fraction. Page 7 of 14

8 Go to the Cn Compositional Analysis tab, set Starting Cn = 6 and Cn+ = 7and add the Cn+ composition and physical properties in the respective boxes. For this example set Cn+ Pseudo Components = 74 because components up to C 80 will be characterized and set Basis = Mass %. Since no bulk properties were provided leave MW and Liquid 60 F boxes in blank. Do not forget to add the composition of C6 in the compositional analysis table. Since the molecular weight, liquid density and normal boiling point for the C6 fraction are not provided, they will be obtained from the suggested values by Riazi [1]. The assay is now ready to cut, click on the Cut button to see the results. In the Results section, click on the Type dropdown list and select Fraction vs Cn and change the basis to Mole. Page 8 of 14

9 This curve shows a left skewed distribution type of the mole fraction of the plus fraction components. Now, change the curve Type to MW vs Cn. The molecular weight distribution shows a continuous increment through the Carbon number of the plus fraction pseudo components. The same continuous behaviour is also expected for the Liquid 60 F and NBP vs Cn curves as it is shown below. Page 9 of 14

10 To see a summary of all the estimated pseudo component critical and physical properties click on the Pseudo Components tab. Page 10 of 14

11 The Cn Compositional Analysis has been proven to give satisfactory results on reservoir oils and gases. In addition, the method has been proven to model heavy oils where a left skewed distribution can be present. Sensitivity studies show that increasing the number of pseudo components of the plus fraction yields in improvements in the distribution of molecular weight, liquid density and normal boiling points of the plus fraction pseudo components. References 1. Riazi, M.R.; Characterization and Properties of Petroleum Fractions, ASTM International, West Conshohocken, PA, 2005 Tips & Tricks Create a line sizing summary for your case Luis Duhne VMG Calgary The line sizing utility from the material streams provides a convenient way to calculate the line size based on dp/100 ft or velocity. In addition, the line sizing utility can back calculate the pressure drop based on a specified inner diameter. This feature has been available in Steady State s previous versions and recently added to Dynamics in VMGSim 7.0. Page 11 of 14

12 Note: The line sizing utility uses the same Colebrook pressure drop correlation available in the pipe segment operation. So, it is only suitable for single-phase material streams. For two-phase streams, the use of pipe segments is recommended. The flexibility provided by the summary sets, combined with the line sizing utility, allows you to generate a line sizing summary for all of the material streams in your model efficiently. The following steps show how to set up the line sizing summary. The manual example MDEA example.vmp is used for this tutorial. 1. Create a summary set of with all the Material Streams (Reporting > Summary Sets) 2. Click on the button Select Variables and clear the selected variables Page 12 of 14

13 Note: The In port of the material stream is selected. Material Streams show the contents of the In port by default to make the process of adding fluid properties more efficient. 3. Select Material Stream from the selection tree and then select the line sizing variables from the Available items list 4. Press OK and Check the activate line sizing box of each stream to get calculate its line size Page 13 of 14

14 5. To automate this task in the future, you can save a data group with the selected variables and use it next time Virtual Materials Group, Inc. #222, 1829 Ranchlands Blvd. NW Calgary, Alberta, Canada T3G 2A7 This was created and delivered using Industry Mailout Page 14 of 14