Eliminating turbulence in oil pipelines

ended

Proof of Concept TURBO FLOW Virtually all pipeline flows are highly turbulent. What is probably less well known is that the major part of the frictional losses in pipelines is caused by turbulence. Already at moderate speeds turbulence is responsible for a 50% drag increase while at high speeds (i.e. high Reynolds numbers) this figure can easily increase to 99%. Annual global pumping costs for oil pipelines alone amount to tens of billions of Euros. If instead the fluid could be maintained in the well-ordered “laminar” motion, pumping costs would drop dramatically. Up to now no methods existed that could convert fully turbulent flows in pipes back to laminar. In the course of the ERC project TURBOFLOW we discovered such a method and we demonstrated that under ideal laboratory conditions a fully turbulent flow can be completely relaminarized and as a consequence friction losses are reduced by as much as 80%. The aim is now to push this technology from the laboratory to practically realistic situations by testing the method in an oil pipe, closely matching the conditions in real pipeline flows.