The Settling Slurry (SSL) Module is an add-on for AFT Fathom, designed to provide engineers with advanced capabilities for accurately accounting for slurry properties, changing concentrations, and pump performance within their fluid dynamic models. This specialized module helps prevent common issues such as plugged pipes and misapplied pumps, thereby avoiding system failures and excessive operational costs. It seamlessly integrates with new or existing Fathom models, offering a robust solution for complex slurry systems. The module automates much of the analytical heavy lifting, allowing users to accommodate a wide range of slurry data, manage properties of solid particles in a sharable database, and generate special output reports detailing critical slurry-specific parameters like settling velocity, slurry volume, and mass flows. It also enables the evaluation of multiple design and operating cases through its Scenario Manager and facilitates the generation of special slurry system curves essential for understanding velocity limits. Utilizing state-of-the-art correlations, it predicts flow, pressure drop, and reduced pump performance when pumping solids, and supports pump de-rating based on industry standards like ANSI/HI and Warman methods. Users can specify slurries with basic water-based inputs or advanced options allowing for any carrier fluid, variable properties among pipes, and heat transfer calculations, choosing from Minimal, Simplified, or Detailed calculation methodologies to suit their design phase needs.

Features & Benefits

• Slurry System Analysis & Optimization
  • Provides capabilities to predict settling velocity and the onset of deposition, prevent plugged pipes and misapplied pumps, and reduce energy usage. It also helps improve overall system performance and reduce operating and maintenance costs. The module utilizes state-of-the-art correlations to predict flow, pressure drop, and reduced pump performance when pumping solids, and generates special slurry system curves critical for understanding important system velocity limits.
• Comprehensive Slurry Data Management
  • Accommodates a wide range of slurry data, allowing users to enter properties of solids particles and maintain them in a sharable database. It displays special output reports with parameters such as im, jm, settling velocity, slurry volume, and mass flows.
• Flexible Slurry Modeling
  • Enables the evaluation of multiple design and operating cases using the Scenario Manager. Users can specify slurries with Basic Water Slurry Input (using water as carrier, isothermal pipes) or Advanced Slurry Input (any carrier fluid, variable properties among pipes, heat transfer, and energy balance calculations). It offers three slurry calculation methods: Minimal (for preliminary design), Simplified (for better solutions with additional information), and Detailed (the default, most rigorous solution methodology). Users can also select excess pressure vs. velocity data to calculate a slurry's M parameter.
• Advanced Pump Performance Analysis
  • Allows for the de-rating of pumps based on slurry properties. Users can choose from two pump slurry de-rating methods: the ANSI/HI Standard 12.1-12.6-2016 method or the Warman method. The module calculates system head loss and generates pump vs. system curves for single or multiple pumps, answering key questions about deposition flow and conditions for increasing head with decreasing flow.