Investigation of a Surfactant for Reducing Friction in Different Pipeline Sizes

The loss or drop of pressure or head which occurs in pipelines or in duct flow due to the fluid's viscosity in or inside the surface of the pipeline or duct is known as friction loss (or skin friction). Pressure drop occurs along the flow direction inside a pipe which is triggered by friction due to fluid, both internal within the fluids and with the piping surfaces, piping restrictions or sudden changes in the geometry of the flow path. Surfactants are used in the oil and gas industries for flow assurance purpose since years, but using the same for reducing friction in pipelines is still rare available in the literatures. In addition, surfactants are the chemicals which are used to get adsorbed and coated on the walls of the pipeline for reducing the friction and also affect the drag reduction. Therefore, surfactant as a friction reducing agent is having lot of scope to explore and a necessary requirement for studying to reduce friction in the pipelines. In this work, sodium lignosulfonate (SLS) is used for the studies of friction in the different diameter of pipelines for measuring the head loss. Two pipe diameters which have been used in this study are ¾ inches and ½ inches. The head loss due to friction has been determined using Darcy–Weisbach equation. It has been found that the surfactant helps to reduce the friction in the pipelines. This work provides a precursor for further studies involving surfactant to reduce friction in the pipelines for various industrial processes.