EVALUATIÓN OF THE CONDENSATION POTENTIAL OF HYDROCARBON FLUIDS IN THE NATIONAL GAS PIPELINE SYSTEM: ESTABLISHING OF ADEQUATE OPERATIONAL SCHEMES

Abstract

For transporting industry of natural gas by pipeline systems, it’s vital to guarantee the integrity of their lines, in order to decrease operational costs and prevent accidents that may damaging against people’s safety, the environment or the infrastructure itself. In this paper it’s presented the principal compounds from a technical study about principal net and its distribution branches to municipalities of the National System Transport of Natural Gas operated by the Colombian Natural Gas Company – Ecogas, (specifically the Cusiana - Porvenir – La Belleza, La Belleza - Cogua, La Belleza – Vasconia, Vasconia - Neiva and Vasconia - Cali gas lines, see Figure 1). The principal objective is evaluate the possible condensation of hydrocarbons fluids inside gas lines, due to compositional characteristics of the gas, the different topographical conditions along the gas line route and the actual and future operational conditions to be implemented in the system. The evaluation performed over this gas streams, generates transcendental information in the creation of safe operational limits that minimizing the existence of obstacle problems and damages over pipeline systems and process equipment, due to the presence of liquid hydrocarbons inside these flow lines.  This article has been prepared in four sections in order to guarantee easy access to each one of the steeps involved in the study. Section one presents the compositional and thermodynamic analysis of feeding gas streams; in section two, its presented the required information for modeling gas lines with definition of the gas pipeline numerical simulation model in stable state; section three presents the sensitivity analysis for gas variation upon loading gas composition at the inlet point of the system, variation of the operational conditions (flow, pressure and gas temperature) and environment temperatures for the different inlet points (branches) with verification of compliance of the Unique Transport Regulation (Reglamento Único de Transporte – RUT) established by CREG (CREG, 1999); section four presents the recommended set up of adequate work schemes required to guarantee the non-existence of hydrocarbon fluid due condensation in the evaluated system.