USING SODIUM STEARATE AS DRAG REDUCING AGENT IN PIPELINES

This research study aims to prove the effectiveness of using Sodium Stearate as Drag Reducing Agent in pipelines. Whilst it is more common to see in Oil and Gas industry to utilize polymer as Drag Reducing Agent, surfactants also show a promising future as Drag Reducing Agent nowadays. When it comes to pipeline, drag had caused severe to production capacity of a line. Drag had caused power pumping loses; decreasing in production capacity and indirectly may caused erosion corrosion to take place. The industries are desperate to find Drag Reducing Agents and still searching for the cheapest yet most effective alternative Drag Reducing Agent. With that in mind, this Final Year Project will be focused more on how the surfactant generally, and specifically Sodium Stearate act as Drag Reducing Agent in pipeline. An experiment setup will be fabricate and conduct to determine the effect of Sodium Stearate use as Drag Reducing Agent in oil pipeline. Unfortunately, due to several circumstances and limitation, the original plan which is to run the experiment using crude oil can not been conducted. Instead of using crude oil, water is been used to replace it. An open loop system are fabricated where water in the storage tank will be pump throughout 4 meter long of testing section of 1 inch diameter Galvanize Iron steel pipeline. An injection mechanism is created to inject the Drag Reducing Agent solutions at the starting point of 4 meter testing section. A total of 7 different concentration of Drag Reducing Agent had been prepared. At the end of testing section, pressure gauge is been placed to monitor the pressure drop and hence examine the percentage drag reduction for each concentration been test. Result from experiment shown that Sodium Stearate prove to have great effect when act as Drag Reducing Agent significantly by recorded highest percentage drag reduction of 33.33% at concentration of 800ppm for low RPM of pump. Therefore, it is concluded that Sodium Stearate, which is surfactant has show the ability to act as Drag Reducing Agent effectively in water-pipeline experiment. Impact of this study can be analysis and to make early hypothesis if the fluid inside pipeline is change from water to crude oil