Submarine Pipelines

In the present day of increasing hydrocarbon demand, the direction of oil exploration has moved to ever increasing
offshore depths and more remote land masses with harsher environments. To this end, our industry has to adapt to
the increasing challenges that have to be faced to ensure that these hydrocarbons can still be economically
recovered. The flow assurance strategies that are currently being deployed to achieve successful hydrocarbons
recovery from these increasing technically challenged areas, increasingly demand an integrated approach to the
design of the transportation systems. It is no longer the case that each element of a hydrocarbon development can
be designed in isolation.
Flow Assurance is not just an analytical routine to predict the pressure and temperature profiles of single and multiphase
pipelines, but an advanced tool-set that models the flow of hydrocarbons from the well bore all the way to
the process facilities and beyond. The tools now used in Flow Assurance have improved the engineer‟s insight into
the critical parameters to the point where informed design improvements can be made that could not previously
have been justified.
The paper will consider the problems faced by today‟s ever more extreme transportation requirements, review
current advanced methodologies for flow assurance for transportation systems and show how integration of flow
assurance into systems design vastly improves and in some case enables hydrocarbon developments.
Observations will be provided in the form of three short case presentations that have implemented advanced
techniques to achieve robust solutions. Specifically:
 Flow assurance issues and implications for ultra deep transportation pipelines
 Planning for the removal of hydrates from wet gas field developments
 Understanding Carbon Capture and Storage transportation systems

The pipe collection discussed here, being under the care of the Department of Mediaeval and Modern Times Archaeology at the Archaeological Museum in Krakow, consists of thirty-seven items, mostly clay bowls of one-piece pipes or stub-stemmed pipes; it also includes a few fragments of clay stems of one-piece pipes as well as unique porcelain bowls and water bags. The collection has been dated broadly to the period between the 17th century and the first half of the 20th century, with the predominance of pipes dated to the 19th century. All the artefacts have been uncovered during archaeological research and supervision in Krakow in 1956–2008.

The collection of the tobacco accessories is dominated by clay stub-stemmed pipes; among those, items without signatures and workshop marks, with multicoloured, mainly yellow or green glazing on their outer surfaces, are especially noteworthy (Photo 1:10-12). They were shaped in two-piece moulds both from ferruginous and kaolinic clays. Some of the pipes had complicated ornaments consisting of geometric or plant-like motifs (Photo 1:9, 14) made with diverse techniques, most often with mould impression. It is likely that the accessories were produced by local potters for the local market. The workshops may have operated near Krakow, as Magdalena Bis argues, quoting potteries in Alwernia and Biecz which also made such items (2009, 239). The workshops could have provided customers in Krakow with various ceramic goods, including tobacco accessories, particularly those for undemanding consumers. This thesis, however, cannot be verified without signatures or other marks helping to identify the products. It is worth stressing that archaeological research in Krakow has not confirmed so far the presence of workshops similar to those in Warsaw or Vilnius, recognisable on the basis of fragments of characteristic ceramic racks used in pipe firing (Zimmermann 1988, 17–18; Meyza 1997, 43, Fig. 7; 2004, 57–58, Abb. 6; Čivilytė, Kvizikevičius, Sarcevičius 2005, 64–65, Abb. 3; Bis 2009, 238).

Most of the pipes, signed items of sound workmanship in particular, came from trade exchange. Burghers of Krakow favoured so-called coffee-house type pipes (Photos 2:7, 9) or signed pipes from numerous Hungarian and Slovakian production plants (Photos 2:5, 8, 10–11). Those accessories, frequent especially in the 19th century, can be treated as evidence of Krakow’s developing trade exchange with large centres producing pipes made of red and kaolinic clays, popular among customers at that time. The great number of such pipes may also have resulted from trade policy of the Austrian authorities, who passed a law abolishing customs autonomy in West Galicia in 1784 and included the region into the overall Austrian system with markedly protectionist tendencies (Kulczykowski 1963, 36). In effect, West Galicia reoriented its trade from the northern to the southern directions, the latter being linked to the countries within the Habsburg Monarchy (Kulczykowski 1963, 36).

Interestingly, the analysed collection contains few one-piece pipes, especially those of Prussian origin (Photo 1:1-7), which suggests that Krakow inhabitants favoured the eastern model of tobacco smoking, related to the Turkish tradition. This problem has been discussed by Katarzyna Meyza, who argues rightly that in the 17th and 18th centuries, Poland was situated at the borderline between West European culture, associated with one-piece pipes, and East European culture, more fond of Turkish stub-stemmed pipes (1997, 33). The impact of the Turkish tradition on the model of tobacco smoking in modern Krakow has also been pointed out by Joanna Dąbal, who notes that Krakow had good trade exchange with south-eastern Europe (2010, 82). Moreover, the scarcity of Prussian one-piece pipes might have resulted from the protectionist customs policy of the Austrian government. Mariusz Kulczykowski writes that the law passed in 1784 was primarily directed against Prussian merchandise imported in considerable amounts by Polish merchants in West Galicia (1963, 36). The few uncovered artefacts of that kind show that the West European model of tobacco smoking was not popular among burghers of Krakow, and pipes of the western type may have been brought to the city by travelling merchants or by soldiers.

The 19th-century assemblage of the tobacco accessories includes porcelain pipes, mainly from Austro-Hungarian manufactures producing china, e.g. in Vienna (Photo 3:1-10). Those artefacts gained popularity especially among soldiers. The Austrian authorities made Krakow a strategic location at that time, positioning many troops in the city. Numerous porcelain pipes uncovered in the barracks and forts built by the Austrians in Krakow confirm that such accessories were trendy among soldiers, which is also evidenced by the finds from the area of St. Benedict Church.

The tobacco accessories uncovered in Krakow reflect its inhabitants’ preferences related mainly to the eastern (Turkish) traditions. They also indicate that tobacco smokers in the city used both local products and high quality accessories from other European centres (Fig. 3). The subject, however, requires further historical and archaeological studies which should cover the Krakow collection as well as analogous finds uncovered in other Polish cities.

Asset owners are required by the government to carry out regular inspection surveys to ensure the integrity of all pressure-containing equipment. Conventionally, such operations are performed manually by teams of trained inspectors through visual examinations on-site or remotely. We present an integrated framework for automating the entire process of pipeline inspection without any need for human intervention, pipeline function interruption, or equipment destruction by unleashing the power of the state-of-the-art digital technologies, including deep learning, computer vision, and cloud storage and computing.
Decades of survey videos captured by remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) and drones are broken into frames with optical character recognition (OCR)-extracted time/location stamps, which are annotated by our inspectors to precisely delineate the boundaries of the damaged areas and their specific categories. After extracting images from videos, augmenting the image data, the training set is fed into a deep convolutional neural network architecture equipped with instance segmentation layers for object detection. Trained models are then deployed on the cloud acting as intelligent inspectors for future surveys, allowing also to balance the trade-off between the inference accuracy and performance speed, being crucial to real time usage of the software.
After a pipe segment subject to damage is identified to be imposing an integrity risk, it will automatically be raised as a flag into our linked maintenance infrastructure along with the corresponding spatiotemporal information of the event to take the necessary maintenance, repair, or replacement actions.
The proposed endeavor outperforms common industry practices, as it not only reduces the asset operational costs by eliminating the need for the labor-intensive manual diagnostic inspections, but also improves the hazard mitigation plan by providing accurate risk assessments in shorter time spans.

The work described in this paper forms part of a closed analytical solution for the quasi-static response of flexibly supported pressurized pipes against lateral impacts. The results can be used, for example, in an analytical study of offshore oil/gas pipelines subjected to impacts from falling anchors, trawl boards or other dropped objects. The solution is based on the principles of virtual velocities. It employs a simplified three dimensional analytical model to provide a closed-form relationship for the denting force in terms of the dent depth. A rigid-perfectly plastic behavior is considered for the tube wall resistance. The flexibility of the soil, existing around and underneath the pipe, is modeled using a subgrade reaction modulus. This work can be regarded as a continuation of previous works reported by one of the authors. It is now extended to take into account the bed flexibility.
Predictions from the proposed mathematical solution are also examined against those from numerical finite element simulations. Various states of end condition, internal pressure, soil stiffness and the pipe embedment into the soil are considered. The comparisons show a good agreement between the results from the analytical model and finite element analyses.

The world is heavily dependent on fossil fuels since most of its energy requirements are fulfilled by conventional methods of burning these fuels. The energy demand is increasing by day with growing population. The energy production by fossil fuels is devastating the environment and survival of life on globe is endangered. The renewal energy technologies are vital to ensure future energy sustenance and environmental issues. Ocean is a vast resource of renewable energy. The technology today makes it possible to extract energy from tides. The growing interest in exploring tidal current technologies has compelling reasons such as security and diversity of supply, intermittent but predictable and limited social and environmental impacts. The purpose of this study is to present a comprehensive review of tidal current technologies to harness ocean energy. The ocean energy resources are presented. The author discusses tidal energy technologies. The tidal current turbines are discussed in d...

This work deals with the hydraulic gradient estimation in real-time of a transport pipeline computational model by considering a slightly compressible fluid and slightly deformable conduit walls. Since the hydraulic gradient (J(Q)) caused by the friction phenomenon in a pipeline plays an important role in the system's behavior, and this function is affected by fluid properties' deviations, environmental disturbances and conduit deteriorations, it is proposed that the on-line estimation of J(Q) could be part of a monitoring system. The proposition can be applied to obtain computational models of a line with a junction and assumes only measurements of pressure and flow rate at the ends of the conduit and the junction outflow. The generic form of the gradient function J(Q) is a second-order polynomial with coefficients that involve indirectly pipe roughness, the transversal area of the conduit, fluid viscosity and elements connected to the line. The extended Kalman filter (EKF) is applied to estimate the coefficients of the function J(Q). As a test apparatus, a 163 m long hydraulic pipeline is used. Diverse experiments show the usefulness of the on-line estimation of J(Q) for monitoring and simulation tasks where computational models are necessary.

Abstract: The renewal energy technologies are increasingly popular to ensure future energy sustenance and address environmental issues. The tides are enormous and consistent untapped resource of renewable energy. The growing interest in exploring tidal energy has compelling reasons such as security and diversity of supply, intermittent but predictable and limited social and environmental impacts. The tidal energy industry is undergoing an increasing shift towards diffuser augmented turbines. The reason is the higher power ...

The world is heavily dependent on fossil fuels since most of its energy requirements are fulfilled by conventional methods of burning these fuels. The energy demand is increasing by day with growing population. The energy production by fossil fuels is devastating the environment and survival of life on globe is endangered. The renewal energy technologies are vital to ensure future energy sustenance and environmental issues. Ocean is a vast resource of renewable energy. The technology today makes it possible to extract energy from tides. The growing interest in exploring tidal current technologies has compelling reasons such as security and diversity of supply, intermittent but predictable and limited social and environmental impacts. The purpose of this study is to present a comprehensive review of tidal current technologies to harness ocean energy. The ocean energy resources are presented. The author discusses tidal energy technologies. The tidal current turbines are discussed in detail. The author reviews today’s popular tidal current technologies. The present status of ocean energy development is also reported.

Researchers and engineers around the globe are striving to improve green energy technologies. Among green energy technologies, diffuser augmented tidal turbines are attracting focus due to enormous potential for producing energy. The power output by a tidal turbine is directly proportional to the cube of velocity of incoming fluid flow. Thus, even a minor increase in velocity considerably increases the power output. The diffuser helps accelerate the velocity of incoming fluid flow. Hence, the efficiency of the turbine is significantly increased by using a diffuser. It is challenging to accelerate the incoming flow by a diffuser due to its shape, geometry and fabrication limitations. The diffuser design requires great deal of innovation and time investment. The research community is investing  considerable time and financial resources in this arena. However, limited  research results  are  available  for diffuser augmented tidal turbines due to their emerging nature, large and costly research & development setup, startup cost and proprietary issues. The purpose of this paper is to present the numerical simulation of 2D model of diffuser for tidal turbine. Numerical simulation results of velocity profile for fifteen models with different mesh sizes is presented in detail. The effect of mesh density on coefficient of velocity is discussed. Predicted results are then compared to experimental results and found in reasonable agreement. The research is essential for utilizing CFD tools for diffuser design for tidal turbine.

Analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) are key design blocks and are currently adopted in many application fields to improve digital systems, which achieve superior performances with respect to analog solutions. Application such as wireless communication and digital audio and video have created the need for cost-effective data converters that will achieve higher speed and resolution. Widespread usage confers great importance to the design activities, which nowadays largely contributes to the production cost in integrated circuit devices (ICs). Various examples of ADC applications can be found in data acquisition systems, measurement systems and digital communication systems also imaging, instrumentation systems. Since the ADC has a continuous, infinite –valued signal as its input, the important analog points on the transfer curve x-axis for an ADC are the ones that corresponding to changes in the digital output word. These input transitions determine the amount of INL and DNL associated with the converter. Hence, we have to considered all the parameters and improving the associated performance may significantly reduce the industrial cost of an ADC manufacturing process and improved the resolution and design specially power consumption. The paper presents a design of 4 bit Pipeline ADC with low power dissipation implemented in <0.18µm.

The Middle East to India Pipeline (MEIDP) will provide an economic and secure source of gas for India, where the demand for energy will continue to increase over the coming decades. The proposed pipeline will be the deepest major infrastructure pipeline and will be laid in water depths exceeding 3000m for significant sections of the 1200km route.

This paper will summarise the findings of the 2013 geophysical reconnaissance survey with particular focus on the Owen Fracture Zone (OFZ) crossing, where the continental plate boundary between the Arabian and Indian tectonic plates meet forming a right lateral strike slip fault movement zone. The movement on the plate boundary will be investigated and examples of survey data will demonstrate the challenges that need to be overcome in crossing this major geohazard feature. The results of the survey will be discussed together with details of the geohazard design process required to identify a feasible route and necessary intervention works at this feature to bring this project closer to reality.

“A first assessment is that this would
not work”, EC Vice-President in charge
of Energy Union Mr. Maros Sefcovic
said in an interview with The Wall
Street Journal at the World Economic
Forum in Davos on the 22nd of January.
He was commenting on the recent
announcement by President Vladimir
Putin and Gazprom’s Alexei Miller.
Indeed, the Russian gas giant’s CEO
announced that South Stream would be
replaced by a new project, Turkish
Stream, linking Russia to the European
part of Turkey and this in addition to
the existing 16 billion cubic meters
(bcm) Blue stream.
This policy brief looks at the various
implications this new reality could have
for Europe’s energy security.

Tidal energy is one of the most predictable forms of renewable energy. Tides posses both potential and kinetic energy. Tidal energy can be utilized by capturing potential energy i.e. by means of tidal barrage and tidal fence or by capturing kinetic energy i.e. by means of tidal current technologies. This study is focused on diffuser augmented tidal turbines that capture the kinetic energy. The power generated by a tidal turbine is directly proportional to the cube of velocity of current flow. The role of the diffuser in diffuser augmented tidal turbines is to help accelerate the incoming current velocity. Consequently, the efficiency of the turbine is significantly increased by using a diffuser. The research community is investing considerable time and financial resources in this growing domain. The diffuser augmented tidal turbines research data is rather scarce due to their emerging nature, large and costly research & development setup, start up cost and proprietary issues. The purpose of this paper is to study the effect of length and angle on NACA 0010 airfoil for diffuser design. Numerical simulation is carried out to investigate velocity and mass flow rate at the throat. The drag force due to diffuser installation is also calculated.

Every once in a while in sidewalks and streets of our country’s cities and even rural areas, we are witnessing various drillings from different city organizations and institutes including municipalities, electricity companies, and etc. These drillings that are being done for different reasons such as creating pipeline networks for transferring water, sewage, natural gas and even transfer and distribution of petroleum fuels including raw oil and in some cases for cable lines of electricity and telecommunications, it might be for the first time and in fact for constructing and installing new pipelines and cable lines or that due to defects and damages to existing underground pipes and cables, it would be necessary to drill, excavate and exchange or repair networks.

This study is focused on diffuser augmented tidal current turbines that capture the kinetic energy in a tidal stream. The energy that  can be extracted from tides is proportional to the cube of the current velocity. The role of the diffuser in diffuser augmented tidal turbines is to help accelerate the incoming current velocity. Consequently, the  efficiency of the turbine can be  significantly increased by using a diffuser. The research community is investing considerable time and financial resources in this growing domain. The diffuser augmented tidal turbines research data is rather scarce due to their emerging nature, large and costly research and development setup, start up cost and proprietary issues. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of length and angle on NACA 0018 airfoil for diffuser design. CFD simulation is carried out to investigate velocity and mass flow rate at the throat. The drag force due to diffuser installation is also calculated. Velocity inside the diffuser increases with diffuser length and angle of attack. Velocity increases up to stall angle and then drops due to flow separation. The drag force is also dominant compared to lift coefficient near stall angle region.

The renewal energy technologies are increasingly  popular to ensure future energy sustenance and address environmental issues. The tides are enormous and consistent untapped resource of renewable energy. The growing interest in exploring tidal energy has compelling reasons such as security and diversity of supply, intermittent but predictable and limited social and environmental impacts. The tidal energy industry is undergoing an increasing shift towards diffuser augmented turbines. The reason is the higher power output of diffuser augmented turbines compared to conventional open turbines. The purpose of this study is to present a comprehensive review of diffuser augmented horizontal axis tidal current turbines. The components, relative advantages, limitations and design parameters of diffuser augmented horizontal axis tidal current turbines are presented in detail. CFD simulation of NACA 0016 airfoil is carried out to explore its potential for designing a diffuser. The core issues associated with diffuser augmented horizontal axis tidal current turbines are also discussed.

This work deals with the hydraulic gradient estimation in real-time of a transport pipeline computational model by considering a slightly compressible fluid and slightly deformable conduit walls. Since the hydraulic gradient (J(Q)) caused by the friction phenomenon in a pipeline plays an important role in the system&#39;s behavior, and this function is affected by fluid properties&#39; deviations, environmental disturbances and conduit deteriorations, it is proposed that the on-line estimation of J(Q) could be part of a monitoring system. The proposition can be applied to obtain computational models of a line with a junction and assumes only measurements of pressure and flow rate at the ends of the conduit and the junction outflow. The generic form of the gradient function J(Q) is a second-order polynomial with coefficients that involve indirectly pipe roughness, the transversal area of the conduit, fluid viscosity and elements connected to the line. The extended Kalman filter (EKF)...

Earthquake is one of the natural disasters that has always been of interest to researchers. It seems to be difficult to deal with an earthquake due to its accidental nature and unpredictability. Today, with the expansion of cities and the growth in their population, concerns about the increase in casualties and damages caused by the earthquake have increased. Post-earthquake management is highly dependent on predicting the amount and type of damage in any type of structure. Among these structures, little attention has been paid to infrastructures, including underground and submarine pipelines. Given the importance of these structures, research on the impact of earthquakes on these structures and their forms of damages is essential. It is also very important to predict the disaster management plan of the water supply, sewer, oil, and gas pipeline networks due to the earthquake threat. As it is known, the comprehensive approach to disaster management includes prevention (mitigation), ...

Abstract: The renewal energy technologies are increasingly popular to ensure future energy sustenance and address environmental issues. The tides are enormous and consistent untapped resource of renewable energy. The growing interest in exploring tidal energy has compelling reasons such as security and diversity of supply, intermittent but predictable and limited social and environmental impacts. The tidal energy industry is undergoing an increasing shift towards diffuser augmented turbines. The reason is the higher power ...

This article presents an approach based on a state observer to calibrate the Hazen-Williams (HW) equation, which is widely used to model the head loss in a pipeline. To perform the calibration process, the approach requires a record over time of the flow rate, which can be taken in any coordinate along the pipeline, and a record of the pressure taken at the inlet. Specifically, the proposed approach allows estimating both the roughness coefficient involved in the HW equation and the hydraulic head at the pipeline outlet. The closure of this contribution presents some results involving data that were collected during experiments in a physical model. Such results show the feasibility of implementing the proposed approach.

Earthquake is one of the natural disasters that has always been of interest to researchers. It seems to be difficult to deal with an earthquake due to its accidental nature and unpredictability. Today, with the expansion of cities and the growth in their population, concerns about the increase in casualties and damages caused by the earthquake have increased. Post-earthquake management is highly dependent on predicting the amount and type of damage in any type of structure. Among these structures, little attention has been paid to infrastructures, including underground and submarine pipelines. Given the importance of these structures, research on the impact of earthquakes on these structures and their forms of damages is essential. It is also very important to predict the disaster management plan of the water supply, sewer, oil, and gas pipeline networks due to the earthquake threat. As it is known, the comprehensive approach to disaster management includes prevention (mitigation), preparedness, response, and recovery stages. This study focuses on investigating possible damages in submarine pipelines after an earthquake and study on mentioned disaster management stages and provides an overview of the effects of possible earthquakes on submarine pipelines.

We characterize the long-term development of high-viscosity gas-liquid intermittent flows by means of a detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA). To this end, the pressures measured at different locations along an ad hoc experimental flow line are compared. We then analyze the relevant time-series to determine the evolution of the various kinds of intermittent flow patterns associated with the mixtures under consideration. Although no pattern transitions are observed in the presence of high-viscosity mixtures, we show that the dynamical attributes of each kind of intermittence evolves from one point to another within the transport system. The analysis indicates that the loss of a long-range correlation between the pressure responses are due to the discharge processes.

Diffuser augmented tidal turbines are getting enormous attention due to their immense potential to increase the generated power output. Researchers around the globe are investing  considerable time and financial resources in this domain. Limited  research  results  are  available  for diffuser augmented tidal turbines due to their emerging nature, large and costly research and development setup, start up cost and proprietary issues. Turbine enclosed in a diffuser  is based on the principle that the generated power output by a tidal turbine is directly proportional to the cube of velocity of incoming fluid flow. Thus, even a minor increase in velocity considerably increases the generated power output. The diffuser helps accelerate the incoming fluid flow. Hence, the efficiency of the turbine is significantly increased by using  a diffuser. It is challenging to accelerate the  incoming  flow by using a diffuser due to its shape, geometry and fabrication limitations. The  diffuser design requires great deal of innovation and time investment. The purpose of this paper is to present the study of  2D model of diffuser for tidal current turbine. The study involves developing a 2D CFD model of diffuser, acquiring simulation results and comparison with experimental results. The mesh is generated in ICEM followed by simulation in CFX. The simulation results are compared  to experimental results and found in reasonable agreement. The research is essential to utilize CFD tools for diffuser design used for tidal current turbine.