Abstract:
Pressure loss in an oil water concurrent flow in pipelines represents a big
challenge in the design and operation of crude oil pipelines. Pumping
capacity and pipeline operation cost is directly affected by the pressure
gradient along the pipeline. This loss is influenced by different parameters
such as the line size; water cut (concentration), oil viscosity, etc. These
losses have attracted number of researchers who investigated the flow type
from different aspects, mostly at small scale (laboratory).
However in this work, the oil water flow in horizontal pipeline is
investigated at the full scale pipeline dimensions (152.4mm diameter and
50 km long) and actual fluid properties using the capabilities of the OLGA
software. The actual operational parameters records used to build and
validate the computational model.
The objective the study is to investigate the factors influencing the
pressure loss along the pipeline and how their influence. Impact of different
parameters in the flow pressure drop along the pipeline is evaluated and
compared against the previous studies and published literature.
It is found that pressure drop in an oil water concurrent flow in horizontal
pipeline is increasing with increase of flow rate, reducing of water content
and reducing of pipe diameter while the inlet temperature has limited effect
on improving flow ability to limited distance with no effect on the overall
pressure gradient.
