Interstitially Insulated Coaxial Pipe: Project Report - Phase One

摘要

The increasing demand for oil is causing exploration to reach into greater ocean depths. The ocean floor temperature increases the risk of the crude oil cooling to a temperature that could result in flow blockage from paraffin formation. Oil companies could potentially spend millions correcting this problem due to lost production time. In order to mitigate this problem, appropriate insulation is added to the pipe to maintain the oil at its extraction temperature, and thus, help minimize paraffin formation. This project investigates how an interstitially insulated coaxial pipe with a metal wire mesh can provide improved insulation properties with simplified pipe construction and production issues. By increasing the thermal resistance within the sub-sea pipe, the thermal energy leaving the oil and entering the cold sub-sea environment is decreased. Experiments have been conducted to determine the heat transfer conductance coefficient for this proposed interstitially insulated coaxial pipe technology and the results have been compared to existing insulation techniques.