Becht Engineering staff are experts in piping, and include former chairman of various ASME piping committees, including ASME B31.3. Becht Engineering performs detailed design for complex piping systems including very high temperature and pressure systems such as piping for FCC flue gas expanders and high pressure LDPE systems, as well as design, analysis, troubleshooting and fitness for service evaluation of piping.
Fully updated for the 2020 Edition of the ASME B31.3 Code, this fourth edition provides background information, historical perspective, and expert commentary on the ASME B31.3 Code requirements for process piping design and construction. It provides the most complete coverage of the Code that is available today and is packed with additional information useful […]
The steam methane reformer (SMR) is the most complex operation and equipment design in an ammonia, hydrogen, or methanol plant. It is also the most expensive single item of capital expenditure and the dominant energy and variable cost consumer in the plant. Most reformer operations have a ‘set & forget’ culture when it comes to […]
Part 1 of this article, which appeared in the April issue of Hydrocarbon Processing, discussed the inception of piping and instrumentation diagrams (P&IDs), their development and maturity, and the challenges in between. The causes, scheduling and limitations of changes to P&IDs, and the Management of Change (MoC) process will be discussed here. CAUSES OF LATE […]
Origin and evolution Process plants require numerous types of equipment to produce the required products from the feed or raw material. This may involve moving gases, liquids and sometimes solids, and carrying out reaction, distillation or separation, cooling, heating and storage of feed, products, byproducts and supporting systems. Process equipment may include columns/towers, reactors, pumps, […]
Update The new edition for ASME B31.3, Process Piping, has been issued (December 2020). As usual, there are many clarifications, updated references to codes and standards, updates to basic allowable stresses and added listed materials to the 2018 Edition. Becht has members on the involved ASME B31 committees and we are committed to sharing […]
The repair of a corroded, damaged, or leaking buried pipe should be approached in a well-structured manner. Here is a roadmap to the repair options for buried steel pipes, with the corresponding brief commentary. 1. Open trench repair 1.1 New line, replacing the existing line (or segment). Determine whether to use the same material, or […]
This posting (November 2019) is an update to an October 2013 post which reflects changes to the ASME B31.3 Code relative to severe cyclic service that have occurred since the original post. There has been a fair amount of confusion as to when the rules for severe cyclic conditions in ASME B31.3 should be used, […]
Bringing Order and Logic to the Evaluation Process There is a multitude of documents and reports that describe the damage mechanisms of ASME pressure equipment (vessels, pumps, valves, piping, and tanks, and their supports) in nuclear power plants. Thousands of pages published by EPRI, the NRC, ASME, NACE, research laboratories, utilities, contractors, and others, to […]
by Dave Dewees, Zumao Chen and L. Magnus Gustafsson This 2-part blog deals with CFD modeling of a mixing tee that is often found in industry. Traditional simulation is validated against experiment, as well as a new commercially available method that offers the possibility of substantial solution time reduction. In fact, the new method is shown […]
by Dave Dewees, Zumao Chen and L. Magnus Gustafsson Miss Part 1? Click Here This is the second part of a 2-part blog. In Part 1, the stress-blended eddy simulation (SBES) and large eddy simulation (LES) approaches for simulating turbulence have been validated against test data obtained from a mixing tee. In this part, the […]
