2 replies to this topic

[afi]

Dear Engineers;
I want to know in a liquid pipeline if the solar radiation effects on temperature of liquid at the end of the line,

If yes how it has been considered in software like Hysys , Pipe phase….



thanks

[ankur2061]

Afi,

Yes it does. Typically solar radiation in middle east countries in the open desert could be as high as 940-950 W/m² . Just like heat loss from a hot pipe to to the surroundings here the case is reverse. The pipeline gains heat due to exposure to solar radiation. All pipeline simulators take into account the ambient conditions for performing pipeline thermal analysis. Ambient conditions include the thermal conductivity of soil (for buried pipe), wind speed, heat transfer coefficients (U) for the surroundings as a manual input or calculated by the simulator.

However, whatever little work I have done on pipeline simulators (HYSYS and PIPESIM) I never needed to specify the solar radiation values as an input since most of the pipelines I encountered ran buried and thus no effect of solar radiation.

But principally solar radiation will play a role in aboveground long distance pipelines.

Regards,
Ankur.

Edited by ankur2061, 01 September 2010 - 05:07 AM.

[kkala]

I want to know in a liquid pipeline if the solar radiation effects on temperature of liquid at the end of the line,If yes how it has been considered in software like Hysys , Pipe phase…

In Greece solar radiation is conservatively taken as 1 kW/m2 (similar value to ones suggested by Ankur) for the safety studies. In the design, supposing that liquid has ambient temperature, design temperature of steel bare pipes is usually taken as 70 oC due to solar radiation. For plants / refineries, I think this can be reached only when fluid is stagnant.
I do not know whether Hysys etc consider this factor. Temperature rise could be estimated assuming a heat flux onto the external pipe area (insulated or not), yet there may be more practical methods for it.
For stress analysis design temperature is considered (70 oC or 10 oC do not seem to make a difference in steel pipes).