Advanced progresses in nature gas pipelining applying different drag reduction/energy saving technologies: A review

Energy conservation and environmental protection has progressively developed into the hot and popular topics in nowadays. In the process of natural gas transmission, almost all the power of the compressor stations has been used to overcome the friction consumption between the flowing gas and pipeline wall, so large numbers of resources are spent on the maintenance of the pumping stations every year. How to reduce the wall friction and increase the transportation output has been becoming the urgent problem to be resolved. Internal smooth coating, injecting nano-chain drag reduction agent and bio-inspired drag-reducing morphology have been gradually taken into application in the past several decades, and the field testing results were all striking and satisfactory. An overview of applying different drag reduction technologies into nature gas pipelining is systemically presented in detail, which has the important significance to understand research status and development tendency of nature gas industry.