Abstract: Pipelines classified as the safest and economical methods used to transport all manner of fluids from one destination to another in all fields start from oil and gas to the food industry. Currently, there are millions Km of pipeline in services in the Oil and Gas industry. Off course these assets need to be integrated to keep a huge amount of investments especially for offshore pipelines when the cost of installation or repair will be multiply by 10.
Pipelines specially Transmission” are the main ‘arteries’ of the oil and gas industry; working 24 hours per day, seven days a week, continuously providing our energy needs. They are critically important to most countries' economies.
To achieve pipeline integrity, first clean pipeline is to be maintained through using pipeline pigging procedures. Pigging improves product quality, reduces pumping demand power, restores full flowing capacities, and reduces downtime. In addition, the pigging process is ideally considered non-destructive to the pipe, and therefore pigs are used for all types of pipe construction materials (steel, and epoxy lined).
Through pipeline inspection by using intelligent pigging or what called In line Inspection ILI ,all pipeline condition may be evaluated and assessment without any disturbance or effecting the operation parameters, which lead to the importance of ILI in our new era. Off course to perform ILI it has to be proved that the mentioned pipeline is Piggable.
In fact, that one third of the world’s pipelines are ‘Unpiggable’ and industry seems to just accept this. Surely, with our era of advanced technologies, the number of un-piggable pipelines across the world should be decreasing.
Traditional pigging companies often feel they have nowhere to turn when faced with an Unpiggable pipeline, leaving the client to, either replace, divert, or resort to costly alternatives, such as cutting into the pipeline.
Traditional pigging schemes often require that all conditions are perfect. However, with pipelines getting older, having different diameters, bends, etc. ..., the perfect conditions may be hardly unattainable.
Egypt owned about 20000 Km of different sizes with different services pipeline starting from 42 inch up to 4 inches with huge investment need to be integrated and monitored to keep our assets, putting into consideration its life time since apportion is working more than 50 years
In Line Inspection; (ILI), intelligent pigging or smart pigs are a combination of sophisticated electronic devices utilizing various technologies and including signal sources, sensors to detect various anomalies, can turn the asset management achieved with much more ease.
Smart pigging has taken on an even more critical role with the promulgation of integrity management rulemaking in the last several years. In some situations, smart pigging is not achievable because of the “Unpiggable” term. Pigging companies and clients work to solve these problems and start to, believe that un-piggable pipelines can be outdated.
This thesis reviews the actual types of Unpiggable pipelines, focuses on the criteria of Unpiggable pipelines and practical methods of turning it to into “piggable” or to find some other solutions for proper and efficient inspection. Many case studies are presented and discussed.
Also, to highlight the urgency of establishing an Egyptian organization for pipeline integrity to deal with all procedures and programs to indorse and secure our asset integrity system especially in oil and gas and petrochemical field.
PIG speed is very important parameter in executing pigging activities , to get optimum results lead to improves efficiency of pigging tasks ,also estimating PIG arrival time at receiving station, ,. The objective of this paper is to control the pig speed.
Our point is to reduce pig device velocity by opening slot (s) through the device itself to transfer the flow from rear to front which lead to velocity reduction to get the optimum inspection results through experimental, we achieve positive results as will be discussed.
Keywords: Pipeline, inspection, corrosion integrity, smart pigging, unpiggable, safety.
Title: Practical Insight into the Un-Piggable Problem with Emphasis on Oil and Gas Pipelines
Author: Eng. Magdy Tawfik, Mohamed A. Kotb, Adel A. Tawfik
International Journal of Mechanical and Industrial Technology
ISSN 2348-7593 (Online)
Research Publish Journals
