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Benefits of Screw Pumps in Oil-and-Gas
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Benefits of Screw Pumps in Oil-and-Gas Fluid-Handling Applications
Introduction As human beings, we are programmed, whether consciously or subconsciously, to embrace the familiar. At the same time, when asked to complete a task, we are apt to identify the easiest way, or choose the path of least resistance, to get it done. When these two things – familiarity and ease – merge, a sense of complacency can be created, a feeling that “this is the best way and there’s no reason to consider any others.”To get more news about Single Screw Pumps, you can visit hw-screwpump.com official website.
Which brings us to the oil-and-gas industry. It is a complicated business, one that spans from the discovery of underground reserves to their recovery, gathering, refining, manufacturing, transport, storage and eventual marketing as consumer goods ranging from motor fuels and asphalt to chemicals and cosmetics. Throughout the various point in this massive production and supply chain, pumps are required to move fluids and gases to and from numerous points.
For many years, the pumping technology of choice in many fluid-transfer applications in oil-and-gas production has been the centrifugal pump. To be fair, centrifugal pumps have performed admirably in these situations. Their method of operation – fluid enters the pump impeller along or near to the rotating axis and is accelerated by the impeller, flowing radially outward into the volute discharge port – makes them well designed for the high-volume, severe-duty transfer applications that are common in the industry. Centrifugal pumps also work especially well with thin, water-like fluids that must be transported through networks of piping with variable flow rates.
So, it’s easy to see why centrifugal pumps have gained a reputation as a go-to technology in oil-and-gas fluid-handling applications. Still, there is an understandable sense of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” thinking when it comes to considering alternatives to centrifugal pumps by operators in the industry. This article, however, will illustrate how a different technology – positive displacement twin- and triple-screw pumps – can oftentimes be a more versatile, reliable and efficient choice than centrifugal pumps in critical fluid-handling operations in the wide-ranging oil-and-gas industry.
The Challenge
The most obvious challenge – and perhaps the toughest to overcome – in making the screw pump more prevalent in oil-and-gas applications is convincing the industry’s operators to move away from a technology that has become ingrained in their minds as the best one for numerous jobs. Generally speaking, the bulk of the fluids that are handled during oil-and-gas production in North America have very low viscosities and must be transferred at very high flow rates, which plays to the operational strength of centrifugal pumps.
Because centrifugal pumps have been successful in North America, other oil-producing regions of the world, especially the Middle East, have taken great pains to replicate the North American production infrastructure, which includes significant use of centrifugal pumps. In many cases, oil-and-gas production and processing systems have been designed around the pumping technology, rather than the other way around. This means that engineers are first familiar with centrifugal pumps and attempt to work within their operational limits. They know how centrifugal pumps operate, know their benefits and are confident that they are the best technology for what they are trying to accomplish.
To illustrate this mindset, in some cases a design engineer – instead of considering an alternative pumping technology – will blend or heat raw crude oil as a way to manipulate the process and get the viscosity of the fluid down to less than 300 cSt, which makes it easier for the centrifugal pump to transfer the fluid. What they are doing in this instance is reconditioning the fluid to fit the pumping technology – irrespective of the cost impact.