Exchange of 32 pipes of crude oil pipeline DN 500 Druzhba during 96 hours
Special repair works were carried out in crude oil pipeline Druzhba between pump station Klobouky and village Tesany in southern Moravia region in Czech Republic in September 2007. These works were unique by own range, limited performance time period and number of used workers and equipments.
32 randomly dislocated pipes were replaced by new pipes onto 9.7 km long section of crude pipeline during all of 96 hours.
In the beginning of this work the section of pipeline was full of crude oil (approximately 2,000 m³) under hydrostatic pressure. To be able to fulfil request and needs of the operator major supplier CEPS had to choose unique and so far never used technology in crude oil pipeline. Crude oil was forced out from the whole section and then perfect decontamination of whole section was performed. This technology enabled to work on the pipeline with open flame, i.e. to use autogenic cutter and carried out next welding works without special environmental and fire protection.
The application of new technology enabled to perform exchange of high number of pipes in very short time, which traditional technologies (for example to plug the line using TDW STOPPLE or exhausting of crude oil) don’t allow in this limited time. Relatively low price is another advantage of this new technology.
See the presentation Exchange of 32 pipes of crude oil pipeline DN 500 Druzhba during 96 hours (PDF, 15992 kB), that our representatives presented at the Repair of Pipelines Conference, in the 2010, in Berlin, Germany.