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New techniques improve in-situ pipe line cleaning and coating

Journal Article · · Pipe Line Ind.; (United States)
OSTI ID:6522089
The in-situ, internal pipeline cleaning and coating process has improved tremendously as industry people have gained experience with the many techniques involved. Operated as a train of mechanical-cleaning, chemical-cleaning, coating, and inspecting pigs, the in situ process requires pre-establishing hydraulic and pneumatic procedures and controls to attain uniform results and running all trains at predetermined, stable velocities. Improved expoxy-based coatings, formulated to protect against the hot corrosive gas and oil pumped from deeper wells, have replaced exterior-rust-inhibitive enamels. Unlike earlier coatings, they can withstand repeated conventional pigging, though they cannot survive scrapers or wire brushes. Developing the camera pig, which runs onstream in 12-in or larger dia multiphase-flow pipelines, was essential to improved pipeline cleaning and coating. GEO's camera pig can take 250 transparencies of internal pipe in a single run, verifying each step of the cleaning-coating process; a distance indicator and corrosion sensors pinpoint corrosion. The pig can also help evaluate an older pipeline's operational integrity. GEO recently used these new techniques to clean and coat five platform-to-platform offshore pipelines in the Gulf of Mexico.
OSTI ID:
6522089
Journal Information:
Pipe Line Ind.; (United States), Journal Name: Pipe Line Ind.; (United States) Vol. 56; ISSN PLINA
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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