Flow capacity calculation of the tar oil pipeline

Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat realized this project with PASS/HYDROSYSTEM in Republic of Bashkortostan, Russian Federation in 2019.

Company Profile

Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat is a major Russian petrochemical complex located in the Republic of Bashkortostan, Salavat.

The Company carries out a full cycle of crude hydrocarbons processing and produces more than 100 different products, over 50% of which are bulk products including motor gasoline, gas oil, fuel oil, road bitumen, polystyrene, low density polyethylene, ammonia, urea etc.

The company exports the products to all the federal subjects of the Russian Federation. The export reach covers over 50 CIS and non-CIS countries including China, Brazil, the UK, Western Europe countries and the Baltic States.

Project Description

Scope

The company had to determine the reasons why the volume of tar oil pumped through the pipeline was lower in comparison to the calculated one.
The analysis task was to determine the initial pressure and flow rate in the existing tar oil pipeline.

Project Specific

The tar oil is pumped from the tankage facilities to the Bitumen Production Unit and is used as raw material for bitumen production.

How PASS software helped in the project execution.

Gazprom performs the analysis for the existing pipeline. It consists of a large number of small parts with multiple changes of diameters.

Manual calculations would cause the following issues:

  1. Dramatically increased time required for analysis.
  2. Limited to approximate results, which would not allow to determine the real reason of the reduced tar oil volume.

To ensure high accuracy of analysis and a reduced project execution period, the company used PASS/ HYDROSYSTEM software.

During analysis, it turned out that the fluid temperature was dropping along the line. As a result, fluid viscosity increased and the flow rate was lower than required.

Results

The performed analysis made it possible to find the real reasons, take timely measures to normalize the volume of pumped tar oil and meet the customer’s project schedule.