Studying the Effect of Some Surfactants on Drag Reduction of Crude Oil Flow

Abstract

The influence of SDBS, SLS, SLES, and SS as drag reducing agents on flow of Iraqi crude oil in pipelines was investigated in the present work. The effect of additive type, additive concentration, pipe diameter, solution flow rate, and the presence of elbows on the percentage of drag reduction (%Dr) and the amount of flow increases (%FI) was addressed. The maximum drag reduction was 55% obtained at 250 ppm SDBS surfactant flowing in straight pipes of 0.0508 m I.D. The dimensional analysis was used for grouping the significant quantities into dimensionless groups to reduce the number of variables. The results showed good agreement between the observed drag reduction percent values and the predicted ones with high value of the correlation coefficient.