Chemical scavenging of hydrogen sulfide and mercaptans

Polymeric drag reduction in pipelines

Keywords
Drag reducerpipelinethroughputcrude oilhydraulicpressure droppump stationturbulentpolymer.
In the oil and gas industry, pipelines are the major avenue of transporting gas and liquids on land. There are other options, such as transportation by railroads or by trucking, but they tend to cost orders of magnitude more than pipeline transportation. The pipelines are the “arteries” that carry the bulk of the crude production from the producing fields to the storage hubs such as Cushing, Oklahoma, then are transported further via other pipelines to refineries or export terminals in the coastal areas. Pipelines are used to carry the bulk of refined products such as gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel from refineries to the major population centers. Sometimes the installed pipeline transportation infrastructure is not enough to meet the transportation needs. The development of pipeline drag reduction using long-chain high molecular weight polymers has become an important tool to allow pipeline companies to transport increasing amounts of liquids using existing infrastructure with limited capital improvements. A pipeline operator can more than double the current throughput capacity by using this technology. It is estimated that more than 80% of the pipelines in North America use this technology. This chapter will examine the background development of the technology as well as the theories of how they work and finally some general engineering concepts for the users of this technology to estimate and utilize the throughput improvements.

Natural gas storage by adsorption

Keywords
Adsorption potential theory
diurnal peak shaving
natural gas storage
isosteric heat
transient thermal behavior
activated carbon
adsorption potential
design storage capacity
integral heat of adsorption

This chapter presents the recent trends in the development of adsorption-based natural gas storage units for diurnal peak shaving and demonstrates their practicality from the heat management point of view. To reach this objective, we first discuss the rationale for storing sales gas and methods of storage and then focus on the fundamentals of adsorption and industrial adsorbents. Then, we discuss the experimental setup and procedure for screening adsorbents, which will be followed by discussing how to determine heat management requirements for the operation of commercial natural gas storage units. The methods discussed involve the use of empirical isothermal models and methods for calculating isosteric heat of adsorption and integral heat of adsorption. For the modeling and optimization of an industrial-scale adsorption-based sales gas storage unit, the integral heat of adsorption is used. Experimental and modeling results showed that 95% of the design storage capacity can be achieved with improved thermal conductivity of adsorbents and jacket cooling of the storage vessel (through the use of a central tube or cooling coil). These results show that adsorption-based sales gas storage is an industrially applicable technology.