Eventos Anais de eventos
ENCIT 2016
16th Brazilian Congress of Thermal Sciences and Engineering
NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF PIG MOTION IN GAS-FLOW PIPELINES USING THE FLUX-CORRECTED TRANSPORT METHOD
Submission Author:
Rodrigo Augusto Camara Patricio , RJ , Brazil
Co-Authors:
Carina Sondermann, Aline Barbosa Figueiredo, Gustavo Cesar Rachid Bodstein, Felipe Bastos de Freitas Rachid
Presenter: Rodrigo Augusto Camara Patricio
doi://10.26678/ABCM.ENCIT2016.CIT2016-0067
Abstract
In order to maintain efficiency and high productivity in pipeline operations, it is necessary to keep an updated maintenance program. The use of PIGs is a very common task, but not a simple one, since there are uncertainties and risks associated to its passage inside a long duct. For these reasons, it is important to follow the motion of a PIG inside a pipeline using numerical simulations. The pigging operation depends on the velocity at which the PIG travels throughout the line, which is coupled to the fluid flow itself. Therefore, it becomes crucial to accurately predict the PIG motion and the fluid flow within the pipeline. This paper presents a mechanical model, along with a numerical scheme, to obtain approximate solutions to the resulting initial-boundary-value problem that describes the PIG movement in a transient gas flow inside a pipeline. The model is discretized within the finite-volume framework and is solved using the Flux-Corrected Transport (FCT) method, which is second-order in space. The problem is formulated as an initial-boundary-value problem of hyperbolic nature. We present results for the PIG velocity history and for the distributions of flow pressure and velocity along the pipe.
Keywords
PIG motion in pipelines, gas-flow pipelines, flux-corrected transport method, Numerical simulation, petroleum engineering
