Process industry software specialist Aspen Technology announces the acquisition of the BLOWDOWN software technology from Professor Stephen Richardson of Imperial College London and Dr Graham Saville, formerly of Imperial College London.
Improving safety through modelling and analysis of depressurisation systems is a critical activity in the design and operation of every process plant. Depressurisation or ‘blowdown’ protects key process equipment by relieving fluids from the equipment in a controlled manner.
Used in hundreds of studies at oil and gas and chemical companies to model depressurisation in process plants, BLOWDOWN technology identifies locations in a system where temperatures can decline dramatically during depressurisation. The low temperature conditions can lead to a drop in the temperature of the walls of the process vessels below the transition temperature of the steel from which the vessel or line is made.
BLOWDOWN will support the aspenONE Engineering suite that provides market-leading process plant modelling and optimisation capabilities to eventually enable AspenTech to provide complete depressurisation system optimisation. This will result in increased engineering efficiency, reduced capital spend and enhanced safety and reliability for AspenTech customers.
AspenTech President and CEO Antonio Pietri explains that aspenONE Engineering is the most comprehensive, integrated and easy-to-use environment for process engineering. By combining BLOWDOWN’s strengths with aspenONE’s capabilities to design and analyse overpressure protection systems, customers can generate inherently safer and more efficient designs.