Research and Application of Drag Reducer for Oil Products

Abstract

Taking the exact demands of chemical additive components added in oil products into account, it is necessary to prepare a drag reducer both with desirable functions and pure composition for oil products differing from that for crude oil. However, that is evidently difficult. This article presents the research and application of a newly-developed drag reducer for oil products, which is innocuous to oil products and easy to handle in its applications. The preparation of the drag reducer was based upon a series of integrative techniques involving adsorbent purification of monomers, implementation of bulk polymerization at low temperatures and ultramicro grinding of polyalphaolefins at normal temperatures. Simultaneously, the drag reducer can be manufactured in different scales by purpose-made equipment system with a little manual operation on safe, reliable, efficient and convenient base. The application test of the drag reducer was conducted successfully and has been commercially applied in Lanzhou-Chengdu-Chongqing Oil Products Pipeline. The application results for the pipeline showed that this drag reducer, as a feasible and available technical method, was not only positively helpful to increase the flow rate of Lanzhou-Chengdu-Chongqing Oil Products Pipeline, but also of great significance for other oil products pipelines in throughput increase and energy saving.