FREE JOURNAL ALERT: Pipeline Technology Journal

The latest issue of Pipeline Technology Journal (www.pipeline-journal.net), Issue 2, March 2017, is now available in digital form.

Pipeline Technology Journal is published by Euro Institute for Information and Technology Transfer GmbH (http://www.eitep.de/). The President & Editor in Chief is Dr. Klaus Ritter (ritter@eitep.de)

According to the Euro Institute Web site …

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The Euro Institute for Information and Technology Transfer in Environmental Protection, EITEP, was originally founded by the German technical and scientific associations on energy and water. The main objective of the EITEP Institute is to foster the international information and technology transfer in the water, energy, environment and infrastructure sector.
Our institute cooperates with different federal and regional governmental ministries, institutions of higher education and our partner associations and their member companies. By means of this network in Europe, Asia, Middle East and Africa, the EITEP Institute develops and organizes international conferences, seminars, electronic journals (Pipeline Technology Journal, Infrastructure Technology Journal) and trade shows like Pipeline Technology Conference, Infrastructure North Africa and Infrastructure Middle East.
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The current issue of Pipeline Technology Journal includes the following articles …

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ARTICLES
The Importance of Combatting Corrosion
Andreas Pfanger, Senior Integrity Engineer NDT Global
andreas.pfanger@ndt-global.com
ABSTRACT
No matter the location of a pipeline – be it under or above ground, offshore or onshore – without the necessary protection or maintenance, it is vulnerable to corrosion. The structural integrity of a pipeline is severely susceptible to damage. As pipeline materials are often placed in environments where corrosion is a regular occurrence, the need to manage and mitigate the potential damage caused by corrosion is paramount. These environments – sometimes referred to as extreme – push the pipeline materials beyond their considered design and construction. Even in occasions where manufacturers account for corrosion, the volatile nature of the environment often results in unanticipated corrosion damage. It is important, therefore, to record high-resolution data with the latest and most innovative tool technology to help manage the threat that corrosion poses. NDT Global employs such tactics. A leading supplier of ultrasonic pipeline in-line inspection (ILI) and data analysis, the company has conducted ultrasonic testing (UT) on countless pipelines and has a combined 465 man-years of experience in data analysis. 

Pigging Time Interval for a PipelineTransports Heavy Crude Oil
Hesham A. M. Abdou, Agiba Petroleum Company, General Manager In Operations Department
heshamaabdou@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
In western desert at Egypt, an onshore pipeline; 10.75 inch (outer diameter) x 20 km & 0.366 inch thickness, transports mixture of heavy crude oil (22 API = 0.9218 sp.gr. & 30 c.St.) with water. Its original design was for transportation of 42 Thousands Barrel Per Day (TBPD) at an average recommended flow velocity as 5.0 ft/s, gathered from many future wells. Currently, flow rate is 20 TBPD at low flow velocity so, it’s a chance for sand settling and accumulation of paraffin, wax, ... etc. hence a pigging program is needed with time interval that will be determined in this paper which aim is to find out a relation between increase in pressure loss and blockage may happens in the pipeline as a result of sand settling at different levels of production flow rates, it’s well known that such settling is expected with flow velocity less than the recommended one. By continuous building up of sand settled on internal wall of the pipeline, internal flow passage decreases and pressure loss increases which reflects on well head pressure as back pressure tends to decrease flow from the oil well. To determine the blocked area by sand, the following factors are considered: 1) Content of basic sediment and water. 2) Sand particle sizes. 3) Period of flow. Also, critical flow velocity (below which, sand settling occurs) is calculated function in solid particle diameter, solid-liquid density ratio and solids volume fraction. Due to nature of crude oil, that has relatively low API, high viscosity and low flowing velocity, it’s recommended not to delay pigging operations behind five days, this subject depends also on the solid particle size. Contribution is determination of pigging time interval based on oil specifications, pressure loss and contained sand particle size, applied in similar situations.

Wireless Portable LDS for Theft Detection
Soonho Jeong, Technology Team Leader at Daehan Oil Pipeline Corporation (DOPCO)
seoinsj@dopco.co.kr
Jinseok Kim, Technology Team Member at Daehan Oil Pipeline Corporation (DOPCO)
jskim@dopco.co.kr
Soohyun You, Technology Team Member at Daehan Oil Pipeline Corporation (DOPCO)
shyou@dopco.co.kr
Abstract
Oil pipeline Leak Detection System (LDS) is widely used to minimize the environmental damages and financial losses by discovering the leakage in its early stages. However, due to the long distance between sensors and immobility, existing wired stationary LDS has inherent limits in detection accuracy. We present a wireless portable LDS which can find the leakage location more accurately than conventional LDS. This wireless portable LDS can transmit and receive pressure transient data in the pipeline via Long Term Evolution (LTE) high speed wireless communication in real time. It is possible to operate more than 24 hours with equipped battery and also to be connected with power supply for continuous monitoring. Mobility of the wireless portable LDS allows us to narrow the suspected range of the leakage event step by step and to minimize the detection error. Wireless portable LDS can be used either by itself or combined with existing LDS to improve the sensitivity. This wireless portable LDS will be helpful to locate very small leaks as well as intermittent theft for the pipeline protection.

Object oriented implementation & maintenance of pipeline SCADA and applications
Martin te Lintelo, Yokogawa Europe BV, Business development manager, oil & gas
martin.te.lintelo@nl.yokogawa.com
Eduard van Loenen, Yokogawa Electric Corporation, SCADA business development manager
Eduard.van.Loenen@nl.yokogawa.com
Abstract:
For the operation of a pipeline being able to operate in a safe and reliable way are basic conditions. A SCADA system together with additional supporting pipeline applications like leak detection, metering, mass balancing, pump and compressor management and batch scheduling & tracking play a crucial role in enabling this and are part of a Pipeline Management System (PMS). Main KPIs for implementing and operating these systems are cost and risk. Although attempts have been made by pipeline operators to define an object oriented IT infrastructure for the PMS following the pipeline (grid) topology it seems that only partial solutions, which don’t use a common definition structure, have been developed. These developments seem to be driven from an IT perspective without including the required elements in the OT environment, but do come with the typical issues of an IT implementation. A crucial element in the PMS development would be having a configurable and truly object oriented SCADA environment following the physical pipeline (grid) topology with integrating standard pipeline applications and hence managing part of the crucial IT/OT integration. In this paper a development of such an environment is described. Elements like the conceptual setup, integrated functions, implementation methods, operational support and maintenance of the system incl. handling extensions of the pipeline (grid) are described together with the (perceived) advantages compared with more conventional approaches.
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TIP: The digital edition of the Pipeline Technology Journal is free.  If you are interested in pipeline corrosion, you should subscribe.