Is My Vision of Petroleum Pipelines Correct?

greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread

Can any of you help me with my vision is how the petroleum industry's pipeline system works? R.C., especially, is the following analogy in the envelope?:

From the information that I've gathered in the past my vision of the pipeline is that it resembles a (railroad) train. Varying grades of petroleum product leaves the refinery in "packets" buffered by some inert product - like the cars of a train. All in the same pipeline. The SCADA system follows the products alone the "track". When a certain product, tagged for a specific customer, arrives at a pipeline junction, it is shunted into another pipeline. Thus, as a train is assembled, moved onto the mainline and cars are ultimately re-routed to other trains along the course to the final destination, petroleum products in the pipelines are similarly re-routed.

This, if it is a reasonably true picture of the situation, is a hugely complex drill and cannot be done with any degree of efficiency by manual switching.

Am I close to the truth?

-- Emmett Darbyshire (DarbyII@AOL.com), December 11, 1999

Answers

Your description is accurate. Other pipelines move other products, like heads of lettuce from Calif. to the East Coast. From picking to eating...about 3 days. There is also a lettuce train that does the fast long haul of perishable foods.

-- Art Soukup (asoukup@mscomputers.net), December 11, 1999.

don't forget the 'gravy' train that runs from your pocket to Washington DC., it appears to be a one-way route though

-- Porky (Porky@in.cellblockD), December 11, 1999.

Hey, Emmett, thanks! I never knew that about the pipelines. I'd always thought of it as being like an aquaduct sort of thing. No wonder my brother-in-law looks so beleaguered these days... (programmer for one of the very big oil companies)

-- Arewyn (isitthatlate@lready.com), December 11, 1999.

You hit the target dude. Any Questions? ANYBODY, ANYBODY??? Is that your final answer???

-- Michael (michaelteever@buffalo.com), December 11, 1999.

I talked at length with the person in charge of the pipeline which runs from the refineries in the Sacramento Delta to near Sacramento, then branching to Reno, Chico, & San Juaquin. The end points of the pipeline are near Las Vegas and northern Oregon.

I was told that there is no inert buffer between products. Specific gravity meters detect the weight of the product, valves and pumps direct the product to its destination. The interface between two products does suffer some mixing, but once again the specific gravity meters detect the boundaries and the mixed products are shunted to storage tanks, the contents of which are periodically trucked back to the refinery for reprocessing. I was told that the intermixing of product is quite small.

All sensor data, ie, the specific gravity meters, pump speed and status, valve status, etc. are all fed by various means, telephone, satellite, microwave, to a central computer located in Orange [if memory serves right, just checked my notes & didn't write that down].

This person was sure that the SCADA system [am I correct in calling it that?] would work, but all personnel were to be on duty during the CDC. He assumed that the controlling computer was OK. They were using SatPhones as a back-up in case of data transmission failures, using manual work-arounds in order to keep product moving.

Other pipeline procedures might vary.

-- Mitchell Barnes (spanda@inreach.com), December 11, 1999.



Amazing that they can track and route different products in a pipeline buried under the ground....but RRs can't find their cars!!

Taz

-- Taz (Tassi123@aol.com), December 11, 1999.


Thanks one and all for your input. And Taz...you're right about the cars. Now where is that Southwest Limited? It was supposed to be in Florida...and Montreal just reported seeing it.

-- Emmett *Darby* Darbyshire (DarbyII@AOL.com), December 11, 1999.

Moderation questions? read the FAQ