Effective Analysis of Liquid Pipeline System Performance Post Upgrade Project

Abstract It is difficult to analyze the performance of liquid transmission pipelines that transport products through a process called batching which allows multiple products, such as heavy crude oil, refined and semi-refined products to be transported in batches one after another. This is because the products delivered vary in batch content, batch size and batch position. A combination of operating data analysis and Hydraulic Pipeline Simulator modeling could be used to effectively analyze the pipeline system performance improvements following a pipeline system upgrade to justify the project’s economic benefits. The subject pipeline is a liquid transmission pipeline with approximately 1,150 km total length of pipe (nominal diameters of 610 mm / 762 mm / 914 mm) and twenty-three (23) pump stations. The pipeline delivers approximately 300,000 bbl/day of diverse types of crude products ranging from refined petroleum to heavy crude. In addition, the delivery batch line-ups vary from day to day. A system upgrade project was completed to improve the system throughput. The upgrade included installing larger motors and Variable Frequency Drive (VFD) at 7 of the 23 pump stations. Following the system upgrade, a method for quantifying post-project benefits was derived for a pipeline system using batch delivery to determine the pipeline throughput improvement and pump power consumption saving. This paper showcases the analytical considerations and calculation methodologies involving pipeline operating SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) data analysis and Hydraulic Pipeline Simulator modeling as a combined approach. Both analytical approaches are utilized to evaluate the performance improvement of the subject pipeline system upgrade in terms of system throughput and power saving. It was concluded that the pipeline system throughput was improved up to 5% and annual energy savings of 18% was achieved post system upgrade. With the optimized analytical evaluation method, the pipeline system performance improvement was effectively evaluated to demonstrate the economic benefits of such a system upgrade project. This combined analytical approach can be used for future system upgrade project discovery guidelines.