Buried pipeline heat transfer modeling has become an important topic in the Oil and Gas industry. The viscosity of fluid i.e. crude oil travelling through the buried pipeline largely depends on the flow temperature and pressure. The aim of this paper is to give an overview of designing the experiment for heat loss from offshore buried pipelines and validation of the experimental model using analytical solution and CFD modeling.
Several benchmark tests have been performed to ensure the validity of the test using theoretical shape factor models which depend on the amount of heat flow, thermal conductivity and geometry of the surrounding medium. This theoretical model has limitations such as the assumption of uniform soil properties around the buried pipeline, isothermal outer surface of the buried pipeline and soil surface. This paper illustrates several steady state and transient experiments to simulate the mechanism of heat loss from an offshore buried pipeline along with the experimental procedures. This paper also shows the transient response for shutdown tests performed in dry sand medium with numerical runs as well. With the progress of the research, several investigations will be made using different burial depths and diameters of the buried pipeline with backfill materials and trenching for different soil conditions, affecting the actual behavior of the model.
