Modeling and simulation of isothermal process of natural gas pipeline drying with dehydrated air

Abstract

Ventilative drying is an essential drying method to protect natural gas pipeline from corrosion and prevent the formation of hydrate. A mathematical model describing the problem of pipelines drying with dehydrated air is developed based on the fundamental principle of mass, momentum, and species conservation in present work. To enhance the accuracy of the model, a new correlation of the evaporation rate of water in pipeline is introduced by taking interfacial resistance into account. Finite volume method (FVM) is employed to discretize the governing equations with first-order upwind scheme for mass and momentum equations and QUICK scheme for species equations. To reduce calculation load, a new solution strategy of semi-implicit method for Sm-linked equations is proposed to solve the nonlinear algebraic equations after the discretization of mathematical model. The results indicate that average absolute deviation between experimental data and the calculations are 8.8% and 8.2% for two cases, respectively. By analysis of dynamic process of the ventilative drying, it is found that the drying process takes place from the ends toward the center of the pipeline. In addition, the results also demonstrate that the nonuniform distribution of the liquid holdup may reduce the service efficiency of dehydrated air at the late period of drying process. Thus, we suggest that the drying process shifts to soak-test stage when the water vapor at the outlet reaches a minimum set value. Finally, a number of influential factors on the drying process are studied.