Thermal-hydraulic analysis of heavy oil transportation in heated sandwich pipelines

Heavy oil production in deepwater is a major challenge to pipeline technology due to high viscosity and associated high pressure drop. In this paper, we propose to apply active electrical heating in multilayered composite pipelines for heavy oil production in deepwater. A thermal-hydraulic analysis is carried out to evaluate the pressure drop reduction and power input requirement. We concluded by comparative numerical studies that the heated sandwich pipeline provides a significant pressure drop reduction and thus a boost of mass flow rate of the oil production for a given available pressure drop between the wellhead and the separator.