Performance of polyacrylamide as drag reduction polymer of crude petroleum flow

Abstract

The influence of polyacrylamide (PAM) as drag reducing polymer on flow of Iraqi crude oil in pipe lines was investigated in the present work. The effect additive concentration, pipe diameter, solution flow rate and the presence of radius elbows on the percentage of drag reduction (%Dr) and the amount of flow increases (%FI) were the variables of study. Maximum drag reduction was 40.64% which was obtained with 50 ppm of PAM polymer flowing in straight pipes of 0.0508 m I.D. The dimensional analysis was used for grouping the significant quantities into dimensionless group to reduce the number of variables. The results showed good agreement between the observed drag reduction percent values and the predicted ones with high value of correlation coefficient.

Keywords

• Material selection
• Surface engineering
• Drag reduction
• Surfactants
• Crude oil
• Fluid flow