Welcome to the Flow Assurance Site!
Even single-phase pipe flow is a complex phenomenon, but recently there have been many exciting new developments, and advances have emerged from such diverse fields as fluid mechanics, mechanical engineering, chemistry, numerical mathematics, software development, control theory, standardization, and empirical data gathering. It’s become a challenge keeping up with it all, and Pipe Flow 1: Single-phase Flow Assurance intends to make the effort more manageable. Pipe Flow 2: Multi-phase Flow Assurance goes builds on the first book, goes through theory for two-phase, three-phase and (partly) four-phase flow.
Free book 1
Just download the free version and have a look. No registration is necessary.
Pipe Flow 1: Single-phase Flow Assurance is the most up-to-date reference for engineers and developers involved with liquid or gas pipelines and networks.
| • | Explores topics essential to studying single-phase liquid and gas pipe flow, including theory and use of commercial simulation programs. |
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| • | Includes a marked survey of commercially available simulation programs. |
| • | New, improved diagrams and formulas for better friction calculations. |
| • | How to include junctions, bends, valves, pumps and other common components. |
| • | Both steady-state and transient simulations. |
| • | The methods are built on the very latest from numerical mathematics, fluid mechanics, software development and market studies. |
How will flow assurance develop in the future?
Click here to see a 30 min video about it.
Survey of commercial simulation tools
There are many commercial simulation tools available on the market, and the variation in user friendliness and underlying theoretical foundation for the various programs is astonishing. Pipe Flow 1 explains how pipe flow simulation programs work and how to check results produced. Its sufficient detail enables readers to create their own simulation tools, and also offers explanations on how to select and use commercial programs. In addition it demonstrates some common sources of errors and how to avoid them.
Checking simulation results
In a typical pipeline project an oil company may be the project owner, while a contractor is used to carry out various phases of project execution. The contractor may do simulations in-house as part of this process, or he can sub-contract it to a company specializing in flow assurance. Results from such simulations need to be verified as reliably as possible. Traditionally, this is done by using a well known and therefore presumably good simulation software package, or by using several subcontractors to do the same simulations and compare results. Both methods are useful, but there are other, less familiar ways of verification as well. In Pipe Flow 1, many convenient verification tests have been developed, some published for the first time. The tests are meant to be useful to everyone involved in checking simulation results, including those who carry out the simulations in the first place. Given how easy some of the checks are, it seems natural to make such verification part of the contractual requirements.Improved friction calculations
A pipeline’s capacity is one of the most important parameters in any design specification, and it is crucial in determining the friction accurately in order to meet that capacity as cheaply and reliably as possible.Pipe Flow 1 demonstrates that the traditional methods easily lead to ten percent inaccuracies in the pressure drop calculations, in some cases significantly more.
Traditional friction calculations suffer from two main weaknesses. First, they rely on measurements which do not stretch into as high Reynolds numbers as one may encounter (in high pressure export gas pipelines, for instance). Second, they rely on summarizing everything to do with surface texture into an ‘equivalent sand grain roughness’. An overwhelming amount of measurements show this yields inaccurate results in part of the relevant Reynolds number range.
