ABOUT PipeTech

PipeTech is an award winning  unique state-of-the-art CFD based computer program for failure consequence analysis of pressurised pipelines. PipeTech is licensed by major corporations including British Petroleum International, Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil and the UK Health & Safety Executive.

PipeTech software has been extensively employed for the failure consequence risk assessment of thousands of kilometers of pipelines across the globe, spanning Canada, Europe, Brazil, and the USA, winning the Institution of Chemical Engineers prestigious Safety and Environment Best Practice Award.

Pressurised pipelines are frequently employed for transporting large quantities of hydrocarbons across the globe. For example, a typical 150 km, 0.8 m i.d. pipeline transporting natural gas at 100 bar contains almost 637,000 kg of inventory. This represents an enormous source of energy release. Accordingly, in the event of a pipeline failure, all the major consequences such as fire, explosion, environmental pollution and atmospheric dispersion must be reliably determined.

Central to providing the above information with acceptable certainty, is the accurate prediction of the time variant discharge flow rate, temperature, pressure and the fluid phase following pipeline failure.

Such information lays the foundation for determining the minimum safe distances to populate areas and formulating emergency response planning.

Given the complex nature of the interacting processes governing the discharge process, the use of a rigorous CFD model is an essential requirement for producing reliable pipeline failure consequence data. Simplified approaches such as approximating the multi-component hydrocarbon mixture with a pseudo-fluid, or those based on shortcut simplistic analytical curve fitting techniques, aimed at producing rapid results, have very limited range of applicability, often resulting in significant errors.

Developed in close consultation with major industry and legislative organizations, PipeTech’s background theory has been tested and published in several top rated peer reviewed journals spanning over two decades. Extensively validated against real data, PipeTech is the only commercially available pipeline

failure consequence software accounting for the most important phenomena governing the discharge process, handling an extensive range of multi-component hydrocarbon mixtures without recourse to unrealistic simplistic assumptions.

Such capability is essential, given that the outflow data such as the discharge rate, fluid phase (i.e. liquid, gas or 2-phase flow) and temperature serve as the source term for determining all the consequences associated with pipeline failure, including fire, explosion, atmospheric dispersion, and ultimately the risk to the environment, people and property.

Awarded the Institution of Chemical Engineers Safety and Environment Best Practice Award, PipeTech is licensed by major corporations and legislative organisations such as British Petroleum, Shell, ExxonMobil and the UK Health and Safety Executive.

PipeTech is easy to use, requiring minimal training.