Drag Reduction in crude oil pipelines

[jmw]

Well, normally it's snake oil time when anyone talks about using electric charges/magnets etc to improve fuel efficiency, but when it comes to viscosity reduction, a US Department of Energy Test seems to show a significant temporary reduction in crude oil viscosity using the STWA device

As I recall, the use of "Snot" to reduce pipeline friction is an expensive solution and the Snot (drag reducer) tends to be broken down by the action of pumps etc so that after a distance along the pipeline it loses effectiveness.
In this device a seeming 50% viscosity reduction is feasible where the crude passes through some charged screens which align the particulate matter reducing internal friction.

OK, a couple of questions occur:
how much pressure drop does the device add the the flow - be ironic if it took most of the pressure drop achieved by viscosity reduction - and how far down the pipeline before the particulates are all over the shop again?

From the test reports power was reduced significantly so I guess that answers the first part of my question.
But how temporary is temporary?
According to the reports:

When the AOT was disengaged, viscosity and pressure were observed to revert slowly back to baseline, returning to baseline values after approximately 11hours before the temperature viscosity reduction effect supplanted the AOT viscosity reduction effect.

This seems quite promising.

Anyone been involved with these tests or with the device?
Did I miss something here?

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[jmw]

Well, yes.
Reading the May 2012 report and looking at the data what made me curious was why the treated oil seems to show no temperature viscosity effects.
This isn't explained.
Nor do they say how viscosity was measured which, since this is all about viscosity, seems a significant oversight.


JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[zdas04]

There have been some documented cases where the pumping power requirements were reduced by over 20% by adding friction reducers in water floods in old oil fields. I haven't seen this magical electronic device, it may be every bit as effective as the inventors claim. And it may not.

What cracks me up is that people want to put the chemical version of this stuff in natural gas lines. The chemical has a viscosity around 80% the viscosity of water, but it is 4000% of the viscosity of natural gas so people add something that is 40 times more resistant to flow that the bulk fluid to try to improve the overall resistance to flow. I guess it really doesn't take brains to manage a budget.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

"Belief" is the acceptance of an hypotheses in the absence of data.
"Prejudice" is having an opinion not supported by the preponderance of the data.
"Knowledge" is only found through the accumulation and analysis of data.