Application and significance of flow assurance on one crude oil pipeline in North China

Unlike ordinary refined products, high waxy crude oil has a potential serious safety problem during transportation because of its non-Newtonian characteristic. Further, the operating parameters of the pipeline and physical properties of the crudes are varied. Hence a common practice for the waxy crude pipeline operator is to overheat the transported crude in order to avoid any potential safety problems. However, this could lead to high energy consumption and not necessarily guarantee the safety of the pipeline because the entire system is a non-linear system and the parameters contains a large amount of uncertainly. Therefore flow assurance which means ensuring the safety of hydro carbon transmission is of great importance for pipeline company in China. In the paper, the mathematical model for simulating non-Newtonian flow is briefly presented, then the flow assurance technique and its process are generally explained. The evaluation results are obtained by using the knowledge and the results show that with the flow assurance technique, the safety is assured in all cases and the energy consumption is significantly reduced by about 20% in one typical case. Further, the content of the flow assurance technique is based on the real field data and the experiment data of the transported crudes. Therefore the technique could be generally applied to all the hydro carbon pipelines if the data accuracy is guaranteed.