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Tech Notes |
Corrosion is just the
pits
In the course of handling used production equipment we become all too familiar with the effects of corrosion. Some of the lessons learned from 20-year-old equipment are a good guide to making sure that our newer equipment remains usable for a long time. We see corrosion on a variety of equipment ranging from pumpjacks to vessels. Pumpjacks are subject to corrosion on their structures, but also on their gear trains and bearings. On the other hand, oilfield vessels are in contact with a variety of nasty chemicals brought up from below. (more...) Don’t blow it with your newly surplused compressor Of all the gas processing equipment out there, compression often represents the larger portion of capital and operating costs. Purchase prices ranging from $1,100 to $1,600 per horsepower are quite common. To producers, this means that dollars tied up in surplus compression can represent missed drilling opportunities. (more...) Emissions of byproducts to our petroleum industry are getting a lot of space in the Canadian press. Much has changed and quite a few guidelines for dealing with these emissions are out. The list of institutions guiding the control of emissions is long and varied: GRI, EUB, CAPP, CGA, and SEPAC to name a few. Recent developments in environmental regulations are leading the oil and gas industry to consider aromatic hydrocarbons and other volatile emissions as detrimental to our atmosphere. These fugitive emissions from tanks and other equipment include aromatic hydrocarbons such as Benzene, Toluene, Ethyl Benzene, and Xylene (BTEX), and are present along with other volatile organic compounds (VOC’s). Some good sources for relevant guidelines, regulations and their timing, are www.capp.ca and www.eub.gov.ca.ab (more...) Exhaust Valve Exhaustion on Compressors Most producers use compressors of one kind or another to help get the gas pumped up from the wellhead pressure to the pressure preferred by their friendly local midstream operator or pipeline company. Although there are many different designs of compressor out there, such as the screw, centrifugal vane etc., by far the more common type is the reciprocal unit. Reciprocal units use either a gas or an electric driver to turn a compressor. The compressor frame consists of a number of cylinders. These cylinders use suction valves, which open to let low-pressure gas in, and then discharge valves to let out the high-pressure gas. Some of these compressors can be as small as a motorcycle, or as large as a 2 story house. The smallest part inside these, and yet one of the most crucial to the compressor’s performance is the valve. This valve is usually a simple device that automatically opens and closes based simply on a pressure differential on either side. (more...) Canada is the second largest producer of natural gas in the world, but ranks something like fifteenth in terms of reserves in the ground. Getting all this hard-to-find gas to market can be a challenge. One of the challenges is taking water out of the gas. Glycol dehydration is common in the Canadian Petroleum Industry. Glycol variants of the same green liquid in your radiator are used to take water out of gas streams all over Canada. (more...) How do you spell relief?: "Pee Ess Vee" of course Pressure vessels, such as the ones used in our industry, all have a Maximum Allowed Working Pressure (MAWP). Exceed this pressure and you’ll either end up with a much rounder vessel than you initially set out to, or an explosion, or a fire or a combination of these. Of course, the real reason is safety. We owe our people in the field a responsible design that protects not only the equipment, but also a safe work environment. (more...) Pumping units are the familiar symbol of the oilpatch. Almost everyone in Alberta knows what they are and how they work. The jack is a familiar sight in Alberta and part of many a petroleum related company’s logo. The jack has become an enduring symbol of our industry despite continued competition from other forms of artificial lift such as the screw pump, strap jack, hydraulic jack, and jet pumps, the pumpjack is the most familiar. They also tend to be the most enduring. It is not uncommon to have a jack built in the 50’s pumping away today. The pumpjacks secret is few moving parts and slow operation speed. Key also is the proper sizing and design of a beam installation. The tried and true method for doing this thus far has been the API Recommended Practice 11L method. There are a number of programs out there such as RodStar and more that can help size pumping units. (more...) Communications between plants, wellsites and head offices is getting increasingly more affordable with new, reliable technologies available. Communications between facilities can be done using anything from landlines, cellular lines, to radios. These types of systems are often referred to as SCADA systems, short for Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition. Wireless communications are used for communications between wellheads, pipeline, plants and other locales. On a pipeline, monitored items can include compression, valves, cathodic protection, and other off-site station controls. Increasingly environmental monitoring is a part of SCADA applications. (more...) We know them as separators, filter separators, Knockout pots, Cyclone Separators, Centrifugal separators, Vertical Separators, SCUDs, Horizontal Separators, Spherical Separators, Flash tanks, Scrubbers, Slug Catchers, Line Drips, and I’m leaving out a few more. All of the above vessels are designed to do what their name indicates; separate hydrocarbon streams produced at the wellhead into their constituent phases. This can mean separating gas from water, gas from oil, water from oil, and, in the case of a three phase separator, water from gas from oil. (more...) Oilfield Slugs; If only it was as easy as a pinch of salt Slugs in your garden can be good to help it get rid of organic waste matter, but occasionally they can become a pest when they attack your newly planted Rarum Albertae Expensivus . (Go ahead, phone Golden Acres) Slugs in oilfield pipelines are just as unavoidable; they bring a large amount of valuable hydrocarbon to the plant, but if slugs happen without some kind of control system, the damage can be expensive in both human and dollar cost. (more...) Get your treater to treat you right Treating systems have long been one of the most expensive and troublesome of all lease surface equipment. Also, there has been little data available for accurately sizing treating equipment, and as a result, treating equipment is frequently over or undersized." According to C. Richard Sivalls. Little has changed since then. Treaters are some of the least understood and yet most common equipment in oil batteries. One reason is that there are many designs of treaters. For the purposes of this article I will define a treater as a heated, lower-pressure (50-100 psi) vessel that treats mostly oil (70 per cent or more), and some (30 per cent or less) entrained water. (more...) Valves are a common sight in our petroleum industry. In principle, they’re not much different from the tap you close after you brush your teeth in the morning. In practice, they are a great leap in quality and design, each with their own merits. They can reduce a flow or even completely stop the flow of a gas or liquid. Different applications require different designs, and each design has its strong and weak points. Some work best when they’re usually open, others are better left closed; others yet are better at throttling, or reducing flows across them. Others yet are designed to only flow in one direction and automatically close if flow changes direction. (more...) |
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