Technologies for safe and efficient transportation of multiple crudes through the China West Pipeline

The West Crude Pipeline, starting from Urumqi to Lanzhou and total length of 1 838 km, is a strategic channel in western China for petroleum transportation. A series of severe technical challenges have been encountered during its construction and operation, such as transporting multiple crudes whose physical properties differ greatly from each other and vary greatly even in a crude from the same source, and the thermal impact between the crude and the products pipelines laid in one ditch, and transporting crudes in almost all complex ways of crude pipeline operation including batch transportation, cold and hot oil batching, and intermittent transportation of waxy crude in normal status. By means of technical innovation, these problems were tackled successfully, and new technologies were developed including batch transportation of multiple waxy crudes combined with pour point depressant treatment, batching of cold and hot crudes through long-distance pipeline, intermittent operation of long-distance waxy crude pipeline, numerical simulation of the thermal impact between parallel collocated pipelines, and the assessment of the restart failure probability of waxy crude pipeline. Since the pipeline was commissioned in 2007, combined applications of these technologies have successfully met a variety of complex transportation requirements and ensure safe, efficient and flexible operation of the West Crude Pipeline.