Study on the Hot Oil Pipelines’ Cooling Process

Abstract:

The characteristics of the cooling of waxy crude in pipelines during shutdown depend on the insulation layer thermal resistance and the environment characteristics around the pipe. The crude cooling process in the pipeline is a unsteady heat transfer problem with phase change and a moving phase interface while the wax precipitattion, the properties of the crude depend on the temperature deeply. The cooling process of the hot oil pipeline is simulated. It shows that the computation results are consistent with the test results, based on which analysis has been done, which reveals that many factors affects the cooling. With the shutdown time goes by, high temperature area which lies upper inside the pipe as the result of natural convection after shutdown would move adown gradually to the lower part inside pipe. And the bigger the pipe is, the longer the safety shutdown is; the higher original temperature also contributes to the safety restart.

• Periodical: Advanced Materials Research (Volumes 433-440)
• Pages: 4396-4400
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMR.433-440.4396
• Online since: January 2012
• Authors: Gang Liu, Guo Zhong Zhang, Yuan Yuan Zhang
• Keywords: Hot Oil Pipeline, Shutdown, Temperature Drop, Waxy Crude Oil

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