Abstract
In the oil and gas industry, pipeline networks can be used to transport oil and petroleum products from production center to the consumption center. Regular cleaning and inspecting these pipelines is necessary due to the presence of oil deposits. Typically, pigging operation can be applied to clean and inspect of these pipelines. It is important that the velocity of a pig during its passage in the oil pipeline be controlled. Therefore, it is necessary to identify accurately the fluid flow around the pig in order to describe and evaluate the pigs’ motion. In this study, the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach has been applied to model fully turbulent flow around a sample of bypass pig and measure its dynamic velocity. This study tried not only to study the pig motion, but also to investigate the parameters affecting the bypass pig pressure drop and then the optimal state of these basic parameters in the design of a pig is determined. Finally, a numerical analysis of the pig motion is performed for a case study of a 20-ih pipeline to transport of gas oil between Rafsanjan, Yazd and Nain located in Iran and compared with the field test results. The results indicated that the fluid passing through the bypass, the weight and contact force had a significant effect on the pig’s speed, and when bypass diameter was larger, leading to the greater fluctuations.
Highlights
The speed control of the pig can be considered as one of the important problems for the pigging operation due to the limitation in speed and fluid flow inside the pipe
The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of bypass diameter on the fluid flow behavior while pig passes through pipeline, and examine its speed and motion in gas oil pipeline between Rafsanjan, Yazd and Nain in Iran as a case study
In order to conduct field test, two pig receivers were used that placed at intervals of 500 meters so that after getting the signal by the first receiver and registering the time, this receiver can pinpoint its position after the second receiver
Summary
The speed control of the pig can be considered as one of the important problems for the pigging operation due to the limitation in speed and fluid flow inside the pipe. There are several methods of speed control of the pig and one of them is the use of bypass to control the pressure difference between the front and back of the pig. Several researchers have studied the flow around the bypass pigs. McDonald and Baker (1964) were probably the first investigators to present a study on pigging operation and obtained the equation of motion of the pig. It has been argued that pigging of pipeline can increase the fluid transfer efficiency from 30 to 70%. The results were summarized using both the finite-difference numerical method and two fixed and moving coordinate systems. Numerical solution and experimental results agree very well. Azevedo et al (1996) examined pig motion through horizontal pipelines,
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