Design and operation of solar heating system for raw petroleum

This paper introduces a solar raw petroleum heating system to reduce viscosity of the petroleum for its easier transport. Some aspects of design and operation are described in the paper. Natural gas, oil and water are simultaneously contained in the raw petroleum, which need to be heated up to 55°C-60°C in summer and to 68°C in winter. In order to make the system reliable, heat-pipe evacuated tube solar collectors have been used for the solar heating system. Totally 245 sets of heat-pipe evacuated tube collectors, including 1,960 tubes with total aperture area of 392 m2 are adopted. Practical operation results have shown that about 30% of daily average natural gas consumption could be saved.