15-10-2018

KBC announces a strategic partnership with HTRI

KBC (A Yokogawa Company) today announces an extension of its engineering simulation capabilities through an enhanced collaboration with HTRI, the leading source of process heat transfer technology and research, to deliver advanced capabilities in heat exchanger simulation and rating. 

The interoperability between XSimOp ShellTube, a new module for doing detailed simulation and rating of shell and tube heat exchangers, and Petro-SIM will enable more efficient delivery of high fidelity operational and design studies for process units. Process engineers will be able to quickly investigate and analyze the performance of heat exchanger networks in a single simulation case thereby reducing overall design time, minimizing equipment over-design and ensuring design flexibility that appropriately accounts for process variability.

In many process plants, heat exchanger failures and diminishing heat transfer efficiency can cause major process safety problems, account for around 30 per cent of unplanned downtime, and limit unit capacity and throughput.  This can cost some plants in excess of $10 million as a result of various factors including mechanical and chemical-induced corrosion and fouling.

When undertaking operational and design studies, it is vital that technologies for design and rating of heat transfer equipment are fully integrated with the process simulation flowsheet. This ensures the many interacting mechanical and process-related parameters are considered when determining optimal thermal design and operation of heat exchangers within the overall process configuration.

“Heat exchangers sit at the heart of the yield / energy trade-off in operations and their design can have a major influence on plant profitability as well as reliability and safety. Fast, accurate and integrated heat exchanger modeling is vital for delivering safe, reliable and profitable operations,” states Andy Howell, CEO of KBC. “The industry sees HTRI as the heat exchanger design and simulation leader and so we are pleased to be able to include their product within the Petro-SIM family[1] <applewebdata://89F24A64-3C01-42A9-B027-34457E81CF0D#_ftn1>  for end-to-end integrated simulation.”

“We are continuing our extensive research into heat transfer technology and highly value this new partnership with KBC for expanding industry access to our deep know-how and intellectual property in this area,” said Claudette D. Beyer, President and CEO of HTRI. “We know that many of our members derive a lot of value from KBC’s Petro-SIM, so its interoperability with XSimOp and use in end-to-end simulation will unlock even more value for them.”

KBC’s Petro-SIM is the world’s most widely applicable steady-state and dynamic process simulation and optimization software platform. Its open platform architecture promotes exceptional levels of integration and collaboration among project teams. It supports the full engineering workflow across the process lifecycle from design and operations, through performance optimization and stewardship, reducing capital and operating expenses.

HTRI’s Xchanger Suite® – a standalone heat exchanger simulation product – has for some time been able to interface with Petro-SIM. This new strategic partnership builds on the existing relationship between HTRI and KBC to seamlessly integrate XSimOp (a new suite specifically designed to be embedded in 3rd party simulators) within Petro-SIM.

Full interoperability between Petro-SIM and XSimOp ShellTube will be available in Petro-SIM 7 which is due to be released by the end of 2018.