ANALYSIS OF METHODS OF ETHANE PIPELINE TRANSPORTATION

The products of hydrocarbon light fractions processing are becoming of great demand. An important component of natural gas is ethane used for high-tech products at gas chemical complexes. Ethane production in situ is a promising direction, with its subsequent transportation to gas and chemical plants. The most economical type of transport is pipeline transportation, providing the construction of a pipeline system including facilities and a linear part. Ethane is a gas that can be transported along isothermal pipelines in both liquid and gaseous states. At the same time, the question of choosing the most rational variant is relevant. The article analyzes possible methods of transporting ethane and ethane fractions along pipelines, consideres variants for pumping gas in a liquid and gaseous states, taking into account the component composition of the product at a specified productivity and initial thermal parameters to summarize recommendations when choosing the most rational method of product transportation. A method is presented for the analytical representation of the dependences of pressure, elasticity, density and viscosity on temperature for the convenient determination of physical properties of multicomponent ethane fractions. The methodological foundations of the thermal and hydraulic analysis of variants for ethane transportation in two phase states – in liquid and gaseous – with the energy efficiency assessment of gas pumping are presented. It is shown that when transporting ethane in a gaseous state, the metal consumption for the pipeline increases twice as compared with the pipeline for transporting the product in a liquid state, while energy consumption also doubles.