Chapter 5 - Polymeric drag reduction in pipelines

Abstract

In the oil and gas industry, pipelines are the major avenue of transporting gas and liquids on land. There are other options, such as transportation by railroads or by trucking, but they tend to cost orders of magnitude more than pipeline transportation. The pipelines are the “arteries” that carry the bulk of the crude production from the producing fields to the storage hubs such as Cushing, Oklahoma, then are transported further via other pipelines to refineries or export terminals in the coastal areas. Pipelines are used to carry the bulk of refined products such as gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel from refineries to the major population centers. Sometimes the installed pipeline transportation infrastructure is not enough to meet the transportation needs. The development of pipeline drag reduction using long-chain high molecular weight polymers has become an important tool to allow pipeline companies to transport increasing amounts of liquids using existing infrastructure with limited capital improvements. A pipeline operator can more than double the current throughput capacity by using this technology. It is estimated that more than 80% of the pipelines in North America use this technology. This chapter will examine the background development of the technology as well as the theories of how they work and finally some general engineering concepts for the users of this technology to estimate and utilize the throughput improvements.