Thermo-hydraulic Investigations On KU Pipeline System Transporting Mixed Heavy Crude

There would be more diluted FW heavy crude to be transferred into K-U pipeline system during the overhaul of the refinery K,and the old K-U line faces a new challenge.A part of FW heavy crude is generally delivered to refinery K.In order to determine the capacity of the K-U line,the performance curves of pumps are prerequisites.Pump performance deteriorates after years of use,so it is necessary to check the performance curves.Field tests were conducted in accordance with relevant standards to measure the performance of three types of centrifugal pumps and two types of screw pumps in the KU pipeline,and then measured performance curves are compared with the factory performance curves of each pumps.Models of the pipeline system are built by SPS software,and are used to calculate the maximum capacity of the pipeline containing these two kinds of curves.At last,based on the simulation results,the most cost effective transportation schemes in three typical seasons are chosen on actual task requirements.The results show that,for a pump used for many years,its efficiency decreases to different extent.The capacity of refitted K-U pipeline is increased fairly.The capacity bottleneck of the old pipeline is the pipeline section between 701 and 703 station.There are two ways to improve the capacity of the pipeline: One is to improve the behavior of pump station 702,and another is to transport crude by parallel lines between station 701 and station 703 in summer.The optimization method in the paper is effective.Compared with the original operating schemes,20,000 to 40,000 yuans can be saved in different seasons with the optimized schemes.The results show that,instead of increasing crude temperatures,increasing pump discharge pressures as much as possible can contribute to OPEX saving,and the use of screw pumps are preferred.The optimal process schemes can be applied to actual scenarios.