Pipeline blends

You can blend material from the source assets of a pipeline and send it to one of the destination assets.

To create a pipeline blend, first make sure your pipeline is connected to a tank at both ends. The connection may be an indirect one, for example via a manifold. Then right-click on a pipeline column in the Tabular page, or on a pipeline row in the Gantt chart, and choose Pipeline Blend and then Create from the context menu. The Single Blend Inspector for pipeline blends opens.

If a pipeline blend has already been defined where you right clicked, you can either edit it or create a copy. Note that, if you choose to create a copy, the Blend Inspector will not be opened automatically.

Note: Blend optimization is supported only for direct destinations.

The Blend Inspector for pipeline blends is essentially the same as the Blend Inspector for product blends, except that there is no Grade column at the top of the General tab. You can configure and optimize a pipeline blend as you would for a product blend. See the topic on product blends for more information on creating and editing blends in the Blend Inspector.

Note: The property values in the Specification pane of the Pipeline Blend Inspector reflect the state of the destination when all the batches involved in the blend have been pushed through the pipeline and into the destination tank.
This does not correspond to the state of the destination at the End Date shown at the top of the Blend Inspector. At the end date, all the batches included in the blend have entered the pipeline, but they will not reach the destination until subsequent batches have pushed them through the pipeline.

You can also view and edit all the pipeline blends related to a particular asset from the Pipeline Blends pane in the Display page. On that same pane you can create new blends and delete existing blends for that asset.

Set the draw mode

You can choose between two draw modes for pipeline blends:

• Simultaneous: Material is drawn from all blend sources at the same time.

• Sequential: Material is drawn from each source in turn. When all material is drawn from a source, drawing from the next source begins.

You can choose between the two modes via the Draw Mode control in the Blend Recipe section of the Single Blend Inspector for pipeline blends.

When you select Sequential as draw mode, the Draw Order column appears, allowing you to choose the order in which sources transfer material to the blend.

When you select Simultaneous as draw mode, you can choose the Ratio of material transferred from each source, or the Target Rate of transfer for each source. You set either the ratio or the target rate from each source, by clicking the corresponding option button in the Ratio or Target Rate column.

Set initial outflow destination

After all blend components have been sent to their destinations, there is often a small amount of material left over in the pipeline. You can define where this material is sent to using the Initial Outflow Destination column in the pipeline blend inspector, product blend inspector, and import inspector.

This is useful, for example, if the original destination of your material has now been drained, or if the material left in the pipeline is similar to the new material passing through and you just want to mix it all together.

You can also create a flush blend by using the button in the inspector. This will flush the pipe with the source you select.

Simulate a pipeline blend

Blend simulation is controlled by the Automatic Blend Simulation optional feature:

• If the feature is enabled, any edit to the blend triggers a simulation, as long as the portion of scheduling case needed to update the blend values has been simulated. You can still work on the blend while the simulation is running. Further edits stop the simulation and trigger a new one.

  Under these conditions, blends are simulated automatically even if the simulation for the full scheduling case is set to Manual.

• If the feature is disabled, you must simulate the blend manually by clicking the icon in the toolbar of the Single Blend Inspector.

When a blend needs simulating, values that may no longer be up to date turn red, and warning messages appear in the affected panes. Warnings also appear in the tooltips displayed when hovering your mouse pointer on affected cells.

Fill blend destination to maximum

You can fill the destination of one or more blends to maximum from the Gantt chart. Select one or more blends and right-click. Two options are available, as shown in the following image:

• The first option, explicitly mentioning the blend destination, works on a single blend, namely the one you right-clicked on.

• The second option works on multiple blends.

You can also fill the destination to maximum for one or more blends from the Product Blends pane. Select one or more blends and click the icon in the toolbar.

When you invoke the option to fill the destination to maximum for multiple blends, Schedule addresses the selected blends sequentially, filling each destination to maximum and simulating before moving to the following blend. Note that the option is disabled if the Calculate field for the blend is set to Amount in the Single Blend Inspector. Also, the operation is stopped and a warning appears in the following cases:

• The destination of the blend is not a valid tank.

• The destination tank does not have a working maximum specified in the Tanks page.

• The selected blends belong to two different target assets.

• The blend overlaps with other blends for the same asset, or would overlap after adjusting to fill the destination to maximum.

• The destination tank would overflow as a result of the operation.

The operation may be partially completed in the last two cases, depending on where the problem occurs in the sequence of selected blends.

Customize columns

The information available in the Single Blend Inspector is organized into several tables. You can fully configure each table to suit your workflow by moving, resizing, showing and hiding columns.

Note: The column configuration (widths, positions, visibility of columns) of a Blend Inspector is preserved after you close and reopen the Inspector, or Schedule. You do not need to save your case explicitly.
The internal layout of a Blend Inspector is not linked to a Display, but is common to all Blend Inspectors for the same type of blend. When you make a layout change in a Blend Inspector window, this is immediately reflected in any new Blend Inspector window for the same blend type.
These changes are local to your Schedule profile on your computer and are not shared with other users, even if you share your model. Similarly, if another user updates the Display and you get the updates via the Synchronize pane, the visibility, width and position of columns within the Inspectors are not affected.

Hide and show columns

Follow these steps to hide or show columns:

1. Right click on a column header and choose Manage Columns from the context menu. The Manage Columns dialog box appears.

2. If necessary, type in the Filter text box at the top of the window to show only the columns with names containing the text you entered.

3. Clear the check box in the Show column next to each column you want to hide. Similarly, select the check box near to each column you want to show. Changes are made to the table in real time.

4. Click Close once you have finished configuring columns.

Rearrange columns

You can rearrange columns in all tables of the Single Blend Inspector by right clicking on a column (not just the column header) and choosing either Move Column Left or Move Column Right from the context menu.

Alternatively, use the Alt + Left Arrow and Alt + Right Arrow keyboard shortcuts. This is especially useful if you need to move a column by several places.

To restore the default positions of the columns, choose Reset Column Order from the context menu.

The table in the Constraints tab works differently:

• To move a column, click and drag the column header.

• To show and hide columns, right click on a column header and choose Column Chooser from the context menu. Then drag column headers to and from the Customization window to hide and restore columns.

View and edit pipeline blends

Add the Pipeline Blends pane to a Display to view and bulk edit all the pipeline blends related to a given asset. This pane also allows the creation and deletion of pipeline blends. To open the Pipeline Blends pane, click Pipeline Blends in the Panes group of the Home ribbon tab.

From this pane you can do the following:

• Create a new pipeline blend entry for the selected asset by clicking Create and then entering the new information.

• Edit a blend by selecting it and clicking Edit. The pipeline blend inspector opens with the selected blend in the inspector.

• Delete one or more blends by selecting the blends and clicking Delete.

• Move the selected blends up or down in the list by clicking the arrow icons in the toolbar. Each selected blend moves by one position in the list. The blends are swapped in the schedule according to the new ordering, while keeping their original durations. Moving a blend is not possible in two cases:

  • The selected blend or the adjacent blend is linked to other blends.

  • The selected blend or the adjacent blend partially or fully overlaps with other blends.

• Fill the destinations of the selected blends to the maximum available and simulate. See Fill Blend Destination to Maximum for details.

Distillation predictions

The Distillation Predictions pane, found in the General tab of the Single Blend Inspector, allows you to check how your pipeline blend affects the stream properties of any distillation unit in your topology.

In the toolbar at the top of the pane, you can choose the Distillation Unit you want to examine. Once you do that, you can choose a particular mode from the Mode drop-down menu, in case there is more than one.

You can edit the flow rate from the pipeline blend into the selected distillation unit, and change the unit of measure of the flow rates. Therefore you could have a different unit of measure than the one used for the flow rate of the blend. For example, you could use a volume-based unit for your pipeline blend but switch to a weight-base unit for the distillation predictions.

The table at the bottom of the Distillation Predictions pane shows some properties for the feed and the output streams of the distillation unit. As with the other tables of the Blend Inspector, you can fully configure which columns are shown. Right click on a column header and choose Manage Columns from the context menu to add columns showing the properties you want to examine.

You can also create and edit constraints on any of the properties you show. Right click a column header and choose Show Constraints from the context menu to display the constraints columns.

The bottom table in the pane shows the distillation parameters for your chosen unit. You can modify the distillation parameters and change any of their constraints to explore the behavior of the pipeline blend with different configurations of the distillation unit.

Note: Any changes you make to distillation parameters are not applied to the main scheduling case. They are only used to investigate the effects of the pipeline blend within the Single Blend Inspector.

Configuration for blend feed manifolds

Make sure the Blend feed manifold support optional feature is enabled to let blends manage the configuration of the manifolds feeding them.

The feature is enabled by default.

When this feature is enabled, a blend applies an effective configuration to the feed manifold, overriding its default configuration for the duration of the blend. This has several advantages:

• When creating a blend, the underlying manifold configuration remains unchanged. The manifold configuration no longer splits.

• Moving a blend to a different time does not require changes to the manifold configuration, since the effective configuration now moves with the blend.

• Multiple overlapping blends no longer interfere with each other. There is no risk of data loss from one blend overwriting the manifold configuration.