Pipeline used as LPG Storage
Pipeline used as LPG Storage
(OP)
I need to run an LPG pipeline 6 km from a gas plant to a pumping station. The elevation drops continuously by 100m with slopes of 1 to 2.5%.
I also need 2500 m3 of LPG storage.
The intent would be that rather than installing an 8" pipeline solely for transportation, I would install 2x 20" pipelines that would also act as storage. As the pipeline fills with liquid, vapour is displaced upslope.
Pipelines would be setup with pig barrels to allow internal inspection and cleaning.
Does anyone have experience combining the two?
Any ideas on how to measure liquid level?
I also need 2500 m3 of LPG storage.
The intent would be that rather than installing an 8" pipeline solely for transportation, I would install 2x 20" pipelines that would also act as storage. As the pipeline fills with liquid, vapour is displaced upslope.
Pipelines would be setup with pig barrels to allow internal inspection and cleaning.
Does anyone have experience combining the two?
Any ideas on how to measure liquid level?





RE: Pipeline used as LPG Storage
Let your acquaintances be many, but your advisors one in a thousand' ... Book of Ecclesiasticus
RE: Pipeline used as LPG Storage
"Sharing knowledge is the way to immortality"
His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
http://waterhammer.hopout.com.au/
RE: Pipeline used as LPG Storage
RE: Pipeline used as LPG Storage
RE: Pipeline used as LPG Storage
The nom de plume is Stanier after the great British locomotive engineer of last century not strainer?
http://www.lner.info/eng/stanier.shtml
"Sharing knowledge is the way to immortality"
His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
http://waterhammer.hopout.com.au/
RE: Pipeline used as LPG Storage
Let your acquaintances be many, but your advisors one in a thousand' ... Book of Ecclesiasticus
RE: Pipeline used as LPG Storage
Here, in a static stored long "tank" with much, much more surface area per length (or per cubic volume, depending on how you look at it) than a conventional tank, and many thousand times more area than a sphere, you'll be continuously "heating up" the LNG since the dirt will not reach equilibrium.
If not a textbook problem, where will you find a convenient but accessible and available-for-sale continuously sloped hillside 6 km long to bury the pipes?
RE: Pipeline used as LPG Storage
Let your acquaintances be many, but your advisors one in a thousand' ... Book of Ecclesiasticus
RE: Pipeline used as LPG Storage
RE: Pipeline used as LPG Storage
Cost of bullets ($6m) + small 8" pipeline ($2M) is roughly same as a single large pipeline ($8M). x2 smaller lines was considered due to ability to phase capital since full 2500 m3 was not needed at plant startup.
I'll attach a schematic and an elevation drawing of what I am trying to describe.
The product is a propane / butane mixture. Similar to a storage bullet, the pipeline will operate at the vapour pressure corresponding to the temperature of the product.
Notionally, I've selecteed a low spot between two plants for the pump station. Gentle slopes will have the pump station in the liquid phase and the vapour phase at the plants.
Multiphase flow would behave similar to a finger slug catcher where liquid would run along the bottom of the pipe, vapour along the top..... assumption is that there are no major pockets.
RE: Pipeline used as LPG Storage
RE: Pipeline used as LPG Storage
Hummm... it seems that you wern't listening.
What reason do you have to believe that flow will be liquid at the bottom and vapor at the top? Or when you are flowing downhill, vapor will rise to the inlet? At what liquid to gas ratio flowrate will mist flow begin, wave flow? At what flowrate will slug flow begin? Don't think about 2 phase flow operations until you have those and the other flow regimes bracketed and you know that you can operate within the proper range.
Let your acquaintances be many, but your advisors one in a thousand' ... Book of Ecclesiasticus