Who has ever used a pump to pressurize and drive a ball for line cleaning?
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I recently worked on a project involving a 10 km pipeline from a crude oil transfer station to a refinery, using DN700 pipe diameters. Originally, traditional ball receiving and sending cylinders were used to carry out pigging operations; however, during the owner’s inspection, these cylinders were removed, and the backup pump was replaced with a screw pump capable of generating high pressure. Who here is familiar with this technology? If a pump is used for driving, how do you determine the outlet pressure of the pump? And how was the ball-receiving issue resolved?
This is the first time I’ve heard of this issue; I’ll wait to hear from the experts.
Is it safe to do this? Haven’t heard of it.
This is the first time I’ve encountered this as well. The results of the owner’s revisions to the preliminary design are like this; I’d like to hear from experts a detailed explanation
What we do now is also to use a transmitter-receiver unit after each operation; I haven’t heard of using a screw pump to push the balls back and forth under high pressure. But recently I’ve heard of a newer method: using a pump to create circulation directly, meaning that a certain amount of fluid remains in the pipeline at all times. The flow rate and speed can be lower, as long as the fluid keeps moving.
Pigging is usually done using a pig launcher and receiver. Screw pumps are generally used when putting a system into operation or restarting it after the pipeline has been shut down; the head of the pump corresponds to the pressure required for a cold start of the pipeline, and this is specified in the formula handbook. Direct circulation using a pump is also known as the yo-yo operation; it involves transferring oil back from the refinery when the amount of oil at the transfer station is low. This procedure is also used when oil transport is halted at a crude oil transfer station, in order to prevent the crude oil in the pipelines from solidifying.
:Thank you all for your valuable suggestions! I called the relevant people to ask, and it turned out that the owner didn’t want the pipe cleaning done. The screw pump is only used to prevent condensation in the pipes during restart. :L