Full Scale Thermal Testing of a New Flowline Intervention System

Author(s):  
Stéphanie Harchambois ◽  
Vincent Le Toux ◽  
Geoffrey Guindeuil ◽  
Romain Vivet ◽  
François-Xavier Pasquet ◽  
...  

Abstract The Electrically Trace Heated Blanket (ETH-Blanket) is a new offshore intervention/remediation system currently in development by TechnipFMC for the efficient remediation of plugs due to hydrates or wax in subsea production and injection flowlines. The ETH-Blanket consists of a network of heating cables placed underneath an insulation layer which is laid onto the seabed above the plugged flowline. By applying electrical power to the cables, heat is generated by Joule effect which warms up the flowline content until hydrate dissociation or wax plug remediation through softening or complete melting. As part of a Joint Industry Project (JIP) between TechnipFMC, Shell and Total, full-scale thermal testing of an ETH-Blanket prototype was carried out in Artelia facilities (in Grenoble, France). This testing was performed to verify the capability of the ETH-Blanket system to increase the temperature of the fluid inside a pipe sample above a target temperature (hydrate dissociation temperature or wax disappearance temperature) for various conditions. The impact of lateral misalignment of the ETH-blanket on the pipe and of the pipe burial depth were studied. Moreover, the tests were carried out on two pipe samples, with different designs and insulation properties. In parallel, CFD models of the test set-up were built to replicate the thermal behaviour of the ETH-Blanket. The combination of these models with the measured heating efficiency of the prototype allowed characterising the performances of the system in real subsea conditions. This paper presents the description of the full scale thermal testing conditions. Results of the different tests are detailed and the impact of the different parameters on the ETH-Blanket thermal performances are assessed, focusing on natural convection effects, thermal losses and the overall data gathering process.

Author(s):  
Vincent Le Toux ◽  
Stéphanie Harchambois ◽  
Geoffrey Guindeuil ◽  
Romain Vivet ◽  
François-Xavier Pasquet ◽  
...  

Abstract The Electrically Trace Heated Blanket (ETH-Blanket) is a new offshore intervention/remediation system currently in development by TechnipFMC for the efficient remediation of plugs due to hydrates or wax in subsea production and injection flowlines. The ETH-Blanket consists of a network of heating cables placed underneath an insulation layer which is laid onto the seabed above the plugged flowline. By applying electrical power to the cables, heat is generated by Joule effect which warms up the flowline content until hydrate dissociation or wax plug remediation through softening or complete melting. As part of a Joint Industry Project (JIP) between TechnipFMC, Shell and Total, full-scale thermal testing of an ETH-Blanket prototype was carried out in Artelia facilities (Grenoble, France). This testing was performed to verify the capability of the ETH-Blanket system to increase the temperature of the fluid inside a pipe sample above a target temperature (hydrate dissociation temperature or wax disappearance temperature) for various conditions. The impact of lateral misalignment of the ETH-blanket on the pipe and of the pipe burial depth were studied. Moreover, the tests were carried out on two pipe samples, with different designs and insulation properties. CFD models of the test set-up have been built to replicate the thermal behaviour of the ETH-Blanket prototype. Once validated against the test results, the final aim of CFD modelling is to be able to calculate the performances of the system in real subsea conditions. The modelling of the prototype includes a 3D geometry of the system including the soil, natural convection of water between the ETH-blanket and the pipe sample and natural convection of fluid in the pipe sample. The present paper focuses on the CFD work performed to match the full-scale thermal test results and to predict the ETH-Blanket performances for real subsea operating conditions. It will describe the various CFD models used, the sensitivities and findings in terms of local and global heat transfer and flow effects and the comparison to the experimental data.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hai Viet Vo ◽  
Dae-Wook Park

Snow-melting pavement technique is an advanced preservation method, which can prevent the forming of snow or ice on the pavement surface by increasing the temperature using an embedded heating system. The main scope of this study is to evaluate the impact of conductive additives on the heating efficiency. The electrical resistivity and thermal conductivity were considered to investigate effects of conductive additives, graphite, and carbon fibers on the snow-melting ability of asphalt mixtures. Also, the distribution of the conductive additives within the asphalt concrete body was investigated by microstructural imaging. An actual test was applied to simulate realistic heating for an asphalt concrete mixture. Thermal testing indicated that graphite and carbon fibers improve the snow-melting ability of asphalt mixes and their combination is more effective than when used alone. As observed in the microstructural image, carbon fibers show a long-range connecting effect among graphite conductive clusters and gather in bundles when added excessively. According to the actual test, adding the conductive additives helps improve snow-melting efficiency by shortening processing time and raising the surface temperature.


Author(s):  
Geoffrey Guindeuil ◽  
Arnaud Sanchis ◽  
Stephanie Harchambois ◽  
Romain Vivet ◽  
Thierry Palermo ◽  
...  

Abstract The Electrically Trace Heated Blanket (ETH-Blanket) is a new offshore intervention system currently in development by TechnipFMC for the efficient remediation of plugs due to hydrates or wax deposit in subsea production and injection flowlines. The ETH-Blanket consists of a network of heating cables placed underneath an insulation layer which is laid onto the seabed above the plugged flowline. By applying electrical power to the cables, heat is generated by Joule effect which warms up the flowline content until hydrate dissociation or wax plug remediation through softening or complete melting. The ETH-Blanket is currently developed within a Joint Industry project (JIP) between TechnipFMC and Total. The dissociation of hydrate plugs using active heating incurs a number of risks for the integrity of the flowline and for the restoration of production to nominal conditions. As the flowline content is warmed up from ambient to hydrate dissociation temperature and during the dissociation of the hydrate plug, the pressure inside the flowline may potentially increase above design limits due to hydrate degassing and fluid volume expansion. Also, plug run-away scenarios may occur if a large pressure difference exists between both sides of the plug. The remediation operation may fail because of insufficient power or misplacement of the ETH-Blanket. Lastly, even following successful operation of the ETH Blanket, new flowline blockage may occur during subsequent operations such as cold re-start. To mitigate those risks, a hydrate remediation philosophy has been developed specifically for the ETH-Blanket Service. It is based on the development of in-house tools and procedures and builds upon experimental and modelling work performed as part of a previous JIP focusing on the dissociation of hydrate plugs using an ETH-Pipe-in-Pipe [1]. This paper introduces the different elements of the hydrate remediation philosophy, including the development and experimental validation of the dedicated tools used to define the appropriate heating sequence for the safe and efficient dissociation of hydrate plugs.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 (6) ◽  
pp. 1647-1657
Author(s):  
Malcolm Fabiyi ◽  
Asun Larrea ◽  
Wladimir Sarmiento-Darkin ◽  
Tony Wang ◽  
Simon Ho ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Jaroslav Tir ◽  
Johannes Karreth

Civil wars are one of the most pressing problems facing the world. Common approaches such as mediation, intervention, and peacekeeping have produced some results in managing ongoing civil wars, but they fall short in preventing civil wars in the first place. This book argues for considering civil wars from a developmental perspective to identify steps to assure that nascent, low-level armed conflicts do not escalate to full-scale civil wars. We show that highly structured intergovernmental organizations (IGOs, e.g. the World Bank or IMF) are particularly well positioned to engage in civil war prevention. Such organizations have both an enduring self-interest in member-state peace and stability and potent (economic) tools to incentivize peaceful conflict resolution. The book advances the hypothesis that countries that belong to a larger number of highly structured IGOs face a significantly lower risk that emerging low-level armed conflicts on their territories will escalate to full-scale civil wars. Systematic analyses of over 260 low-level armed conflicts that have occurred around the globe since World War II provide consistent and robust support for this hypothesis. The impact of a greater number of memberships in highly structured IGOs is substantial, cutting the risk of escalation by over one-half. Case evidence from Indonesia’s East Timor conflict, Ivory Coast’s post-2010 election crisis, and from the early stages of the conflict in Syria in 2011 provide additional evidence that memberships in highly structured IGOs are indeed key to understanding why some low-level armed conflicts escalate to civil wars and others do not.


2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
E.F.M. Wubben ◽  
H.J. Bremmers ◽  
P.T.M. Ingenbleek ◽  
A.E.J. Wals

Competing frames and interests regarding food provision and resource allocation, adding to the increased global interdependencies, necessitate agri-food companies and institutions to engage themselves in very diverse multi-stakeholder settings. To develop new forms of interaction, and governance, researchers with very different backgrounds in social sciences try to align, or at least share, research trajectories. This first paper in a special issue on governance of differential stakeholder interests discusses, first, different usages of stakeholder categories, second, the related intersubjectivity in sciences, third, an rough sketch of the use of stakeholder management in different social sciences. Social science researchers study a wide variety of topics, such as individual stakeholder impact on new business models, stakeholder group responses to health claims, firm characteristics explaining multi-stakeholder dialogue, and the impact of multi-stakeholder dialogue on promoting production systems, and on environmental innovations. Interestingly, researchers use very different methods for data gathering and data analysis.


Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (24) ◽  
pp. 4717 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvester Johansson ◽  
Jonas Persson ◽  
Stavros Lazarou ◽  
Andreas Theocharis

Social considerations for a sustainable future lead to market demands for electromobility. Hence, electrical power distribution operators are concerned about the real ongoing problem of the electrification of the transport sector. In this regard, the paper aims to investigate the large-scale integration of electric vehicles in a Swedish distribution network. To this end, the integration pattern is taken into consideration as appears in the literature for other countries and applies to the Swedish culture. Moreover, different charging power levels including smart charging techniques are examined for several percentages of electric vehicles penetration. Industrial simulation tools proven for their accuracy are used for the study. The results indicate that the grid can manage about 50% electric vehicles penetration at its current capacity. This percentage decreases when higher charging power levels apply, while the transformers appear overloaded in many cases. The investigation of alternatives to increase the grid’s capabilities reveal that smart techniques are comparable to the conventional re-dimension of the grid. At present, the increased integration of electric vehicles is manageable by implementing a combination of smart gird and upgrade investments in comparison to technically expensive alternatives based on grid digitalization and algorithms that need to be further confirmed for their reliability for power sharing and energy management.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 920
Author(s):  
Yue Hong ◽  
Irina Temiz ◽  
Jianfei Pan ◽  
Mikael Eriksson ◽  
Cecilia Boström

Wave energy converters (WECs), which are designed to harvest ocean wave energy, have recently been improved by the installation of numerous conversion mechanisms; however, it is still difficult to find an appropriate method that can compromise between strong environmental impact and robust performance by transforming irregular wave energy into stable electrical power. To solve this problem, an investigation into the impact of varied wave conditions on the dynamics of WECs and to determine an optimal factor for WECs to comply with long-term impacts was performed. In this work, we researched the performance of WECs influenced by wave climates. We used a permanent magnet linear generator (PMLG)-based WEC that was invented at Uppsala University. The damping effect was first studied with a PMLG-type WEC. Then, a group of sea states was selected to investigate their impact on the power production of the WEC. Two research sites were chosen to investigate the WEC’s annual energy production as well as a study on the optimal damping coefficient impact. In addition, we compared the WEC’s energy production between optimal damping and constant damping under a full range of sea states at both sites. Our results show that there is an optimal damping coefficient that can achieve the WEC’s maximum power output. For the chosen research sites, only a few optimal damping coefficients were able to contribute over 90% of the WEC’s annual energy production. In light of the comparison between optimal and constant damping, we conclude that, for specific regions, constant damping might be a better choice for WECs to optimize long-term energy production.


2015 ◽  
Vol 59 (01) ◽  
pp. 49-65
Author(s):  
Eric J. Terrill ◽  
Genevieve R.L. Taylor

We report on the results from a series of full-scale trials designed to quantify the air entrainment at the stern of an underway vessel. While an extremely complex region to model air entrainment due to the confluence of the breaking transom wave, bubbles from the bow, turbulence from the hull boundary layer, and bubbles and turbulence from propellers, the region is a desirable area to characterize and understand because it serves as the initial conditions of a ship's far-field bubbly wake. Experiments were conducted in 2003 from R/V Revelle and 2004 from R/VAthena II using a custombuilt conductivity probe vertical array that could be deployed at the blunt transom of a full-scale surface ship to measure the void fraction field. The system was designed to be rugged enough to withstand the full speed range of the vessels. From the raw timeseries data, the entrainment of air at speeds ranging from 2.1 to 7.2 m/s is computed at various depths and beam locations. The data represent the first such in-situ measurements from a full-scale vessel and can be used to validate two-phase ship hydrodynamic CFD codes and initialize far-field, bubbly wake CFD models.


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