Potassium formate gel designed for the prevention of water ingress and dewatering of pipelines or flowlines
AssigneeWeatherford/Lamb, Inc.
InventorsJack Curr, Brian Hallett, Alan Sweeney
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A gelled composition for pipeline, flowline, pipeline jumper or flowline jumper dewatering or preventing ingress of seawater into open pipeline systems or components during tie-in operations of jumpers or additional pipe, valving, manifolds, subsea pipeline architecture or flow conduits operations is disclosed, where the composition includes a concentrated metal formate solution and a hydratable polymer. The gelled formate compositions have improved dewatering properties with 100% or 360 pipe coverage. The gelled formate compositions have can also be reused by breaking and reformulation.
Claims26
A method for dewatering a pipeline comprising the step of:
- pumping into a pipeline an aqueous composition including a metal ion formate salt solution and an effective amount of a gelling agent, where the effective amount of the gelling agent is sufficient to gel the composition, where the effective amount is at least 40 ppt, and where the composition reduces an amount of bulk water and/or an amount of residual water in the pipeline below desired amounts,
- recovering the gelled composition,
- breaking the gelled composition,
- filtering the gelled composition and
- reformulating the gelled composition for reuse.
An improved system for dewatering comprising an aqueous composition comprising a metal ion formate salt solution and an effective amount of a gelling agent, where the effective amount of the gelling agent is sufficient to gel the composition, where the effective amount is at least 40 ppt, where the aqueous composition fills a pipeline or portion thereof, where the pipeline or portion thereof is pressurized to a pressure between about 1.25 to about 1.5 times an operating pressure of the pipeline, where the composition reduces an amount of bulk water and/or an amount of residual water in the pipeline below desired amounts, and where the aqueous composition is directly discharged into the environment without further processing or treatment.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.