[warren cox]

Having come from the Oil and Gas Sector I have my way of branching from headers when it comes to orientation. Now im in the pharmaceutical sector they seem to have there own way of branch orientation from headers.
My rule was gases are from the top of the header and water from the bottom for trapped air. Steam from the top for condensate etc

Whats your understanding on this??

[taffypiper]

Odd. I have spent a lot of time in Pharma & that’s how I do it. Gases off the top, liquids off the bottom. What are you being told to do ?

Mind you, in pharma the rules aren’t as hard & fast as in O&G…they are more like guidelines. B)

TP

[aj63]

Gases top liquids bottom……..Simple………

………unless of course you with a certain design outfit in India who went against every industry convention that you could think of. What was more frustrating is that the project owner didn’t disagree with them and I got fed up with banging my head against a brick wall. The piping lead had, according to him, more than 30 years experience and he couldn’t see the problem!

I could write more but my blood pressure only goes through the roof at the thought of it.

[Naveen Chandar Emmar]

As per my under standing a branch may be with the fluid leaving the header or may be entering the header.

There are some cases the branches are in 30 deg orientation for the flow meter connection.

And also we can use horizontal connection of branch.

[James Pennock]

aj63,
You made quite a point (………unless of course you with a certain design outfit in India who went against every industry convention that you could think of. ) about someone not doing branches like everyone else.
So, how were they doing things that was so different?

[Mark Layport]

Using the philosophy of coming off the top of gas headers and off the bottom on liquid headers is more of a “well meaning wife’s tale” then a good design practice. Case in point, we all know (or should) that water sinks to the bottom of hydrocarbon liquid fuels, so putting branch connections off the bottom to protect from getting vapors if off the top would not protect anything, and possibly make things worse under the original scenario.
It’s been my experience, working on existing facilities, that how you come off main headers is more dictated by how easy the branch connection attachment is going to be plus how you’re going to support the new branches. So they all tend to come off the main headers in the same way in each facility …top or bottom, for ease of construction & support.
As to contaminants in the main header, wouldn’t it be better to deal with that issue under daily operation, as apposed to total facility shut-down to address the issue in the main header? So if you had a gas line with a branch connection on the bottom, it could and probably does pick up the liquid(s). These are easily dealt with …“dead legs” or in-line strainer/filters (at levels where maintenance is very easy) makes these issues manageable under normal operation.
Note – IF any contaminate in a commodity, to any piece of equipment, was or is in the “catastrophic” category there will be (or should be) some type of filtering equipment or special arrangement to eliminate that issue. And they won’t rely on how the branch connections came off the main headers.

[Author]

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