The Experiment of Flushing Gelled Crude Oil which Stick on the Wall during Hydraulic Suspension Transportation

Abstract

Gelled crude oil sticking on the wall during hydraulic suspension transportation will lead to large transport resistance and high energy consumption, such serious cases can cause pipeline plugging. In order to promote the technology of hydraulic suspension transportation of gelled crude oil, this paper built the text system of oil sticking on the wall, studied on effects of flushing pipe which oil sticking on with water directly, analyzed whether gelled crude oil sticking on the wall is uniform, the quantity of water for flushing , time for flushing etc the effects on flushing. Experimental results showes that, the effect of a few gelled crude oil particles sticking on the wall, being rinsed by cool water is good; the effect of flushing non-uniform sticking on the wall is better than uniform with large one. When the diameter of 53mm pipe’s wall adhesive 5mm thick (135g) of gelled crude oil (freezing point is 38°C), using the flow of 3.7 to 5.7 m3/h and water of 18°C to flush, the effects of flushing the uniform oil tube which oil stick on is between 2.8 to 5.9%, the effects of flushing the non-uniform one is between 9.5 to 23.3%; when the flow of tap water increased from 3.7 to 5.7m3/h, the quantity of flushed off oil uniform and non-uniform sticking on the wall was increased by 2.1% and 5.8%. For different types of flushing experiment, the effect is better in front 15min. Over time, flushing effect had gradually weakened, and the amount of flush out oil wasn’t increased significantly when time increased to 45min later.