Numerical and experimental study on a bypass pig motion in oil transmission pipeline: a case study

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.

Abstract licence: CC BY-NC-ND

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