Experimental Analysis and Investigation effect of DRA (Drag Reducing Agent) in liquid Hydrocarbon Pipelines

Experimental Analysis and Investigation effect of DRA (Drag Reducing Agent) in liquid Hydrocarbon Pipelines

Sandip Takale

Abstract
Oil and gas industry is one of the most capital-intensive industry in the world. Each step of oil and gas processing starting from exploration, exploitation, up to abandonment of the field, consumes large amount of capital. Optimization in each step of process is essential to reduce expenditure. In this paper, optimization of fluid flow in pipeline during oil transportation will be observed and studied in order to increase pipeline flow performance.

This paper concentrates on chemical application into pipeline therefore the chemical can increase overall pipeline throughput or decrease energy requirement for oil transportation. These chemicals are called drag reducing agent, which consist of various chemicals such as surfactants, polymers, nanofluids, fibers, etc. During the application of chemical into pipeline flow system, these chemicals are already proven to decrease pump work for constant flow rate or allow pipeline to transport more oil for same amount of pump work. The first application of drag reducer in large scale oil transportation was in Trans Alaskan Pipeline System which cancel the need to build several pump stations because of the successful application. Since then, more company worldwide started to apply drag reducer to their pipeline system.

In this paper, one of the method is studied and experimented  For given pipeline system the most optimum DRA is DRA for pipeline section. Different type of oil and pipeline geometry will require different chemical drag reducer.

Keywords: pipeline, drag reduction agent (DRA).