Study the Influence of Sulfur Content and Pressure Gradient for Iraqi Crude Oil Discharge through Pipelines

Abstract

Crude oils are a complex mixture of hundreds of different volatile hydrocarbon molecules and organic materials in the liquid phase accompanied by elemental compounds and contaminants. In the present work, sulfur content influence variations on velocity flow (Reynolds number) of different Iraqi crude oil fields (Refinery of Diwaniya, East Baghdad, and Thi-Qar), and pressure gradient (dp) on the pump power, power loses and the crude oil flow rate have been evaluated. Further, energy losses and the total discharge are appraised to state the feasibility of using desulfurization unit’s in the oil fields. All the experiments have used different API crude oil, with the studied at the oil field surface pipelines sections connecting operating at different sulfur content % and taking the pressure gradient of (2, 4, and 6 kg/cm²), at constant temperature of 28.9°C, and with a constant 4 in pipe diameter. When the sulfur content increases results show that the three types of crude oils (Refinery of Diwaniya, east Baghdad, and Thi-Qar oil fields) the total pumping energy rises when the flow rate becomes smaller through the pipeline, while small influence for energy losses. The increasing pressure gradient (this means that differential pressure was increased), there was more flow rate and with the same behavior vis sulfur content. There is a direct proportion between the flow rate and the pressure differential. Greater flow rates produced from higher pressure differences, as the high-pressure gradient in the line consumes energy must also be large. Also expected that when increasing the sulfur content in the field especially for high percentage (2.1%) in the crude oil will decrease the flow rate and increase the pump power, power losses therefore adding unit to treatment the sulfur very important economically to avoid this entire problem.