Correlation analysis of pipeline corrosion and liquid accumulation in gas gathering station based on computational fluid dynamics

Abstract

In the natural gas station, the produced natural gas often contains water, and there will be obvious liquid phase accumulation in the elbow and straight pipe section. Currently, the selection of pipeline detection points in stations is too empirical to detect all parts of pipelines, which poses a serious threat to safety in production. For a natural gas mainline of a station, based on actual engineering conditions, the CFD method is used to analyze the formation of the liquid film in the pipeline and the distribution of liquid phase in the pipeline to determine the location where the liquid phase is likely to accumulate. The size and distribution of liquid volume fraction reflect the liquid phase aggregation, which is closely related to the pipe structure. The Pearson correlation is used to verify the correlation between the measured data of field wall thickness and the liquid volume fraction of the simulated pipe section. It is found that the correlation degree of the elbow is over 83%, that of the straight pipe section is up to 67%, and that the correlation degree is relatively high. This provides guidance for a reasonable selection of pipeline inspection points on site, reduces on-site inspection workload and cost, and improves the level of integrity management in the station.