The New Progress of Drag Reducing Agents in World Research

Frictional pressure drop (or drag) restricts the flow of liquid in a pipeline, limiting throughput and requiring greater amounts of energy for pumping. Flow improvers used for reducing drag are commonly referred to in the industry as drag reduction agents (DRA). This article presents the latest achievements in research related to DRA’s mechanism and production. A higher molecular weight of polyalpha-olefin will be obtained by bulk polymerization. There are breakthroughs either in research of solution polymerization of alpha-olefin. The DRA’s post-treating processes become better and approach perfection day and day. Recently non-aqueous drag reducing suspensions have been developed, providing significant advantages over previous water-based suspensions and gel-like solution DRAs. Microencapsulated drag reducing agents should be developed in the future because of its advantages in production, transportation, application and post-treating process. In addition, Reynolds number is the first indication to determine whether drag reducer could work or not in fluid flow in a pipeline system. And dependable injection equipment is an important element in the success of DRA application.