Stainless steel pipes for the natural gas industry

Knowledge / 2020-07-17 09:29:19

Natural gas, as an efficient and clean energy source, has a much lower carbon dioxide emissions than the primary primary energy coal and oil at the same calorific value. In recent years, with the advancement of exploration and development technology and the rise of the consumer market, it has developed into the world’s third largest after oil and coal. Great energy. In 2012, natural gas accounted for 23.67% of the global energy consumption structure, second only to oil and coal.
 
In recent years, China’s natural gas consumption has grown rapidly, and natural gas consumption has increased from 30.5 million tons in 2003 to 129.5 million tons in 2012, with an average annual growth rate of 17.42%. Although natural gas applications are growing rapidly, they are in line with the global average In contrast, China's energy consumption is still mainly concentrated in oil and coal. In 2012, natural gas accounted for only 4.50% of China's energy consumption structure, far below the global average of 23.67%.
 
Under the current increasingly prominent resource and environmental constraints, China has further implemented energy conservation and emission reduction strategies, accelerated the optimization of energy consumption structure, and vigorously developed natural gas applications. As China's current natural gas production growth is not as fast as natural gas consumption growth, and the supply gap is relatively large, in order to ensure the supply of gas sources, China has actively expanded foreign imports, starting a new natural gas transmission project in 2005, and importing offshore from Australia and other places since 2006 LNG, by 2012, China imported 42.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas. According to the signed contract, the import of natural gas in 2015 will reach 93.5 billion cubic meters, an increase of 51 billion cubic meters. China's natural gas imports are mainly through three oil and gas pipelines in Central Asia, China, Russia and China-Myanmar, as well as LNG marine transportation. Up to now, China has built 7 LNG receiving stations, and 21 LNG receiving stations are under construction and planned.
 
Industrial stainless steel pipes are mainly used in the LNG industry chain in the field of natural gas, especially LNG receiving stations and gas pipelines. The LNG terminal is a large terminal facility for receiving offshore LNG. It receives LNG shipped from LNG ships, stores it and gasifies it, and distributes it to end users. LNG receiving station's ship unloading system and storage and purification devices make extensive use of low-temperature stainless steel welded pipes.
 
Taking the first phase of the Jiangsu Rudong 3 million ton/year LNG station project constructed by CNPC as an example, the parameters of its LNG pipeline are as follows: length 10.8 km, design pressure 10 MPa, pipe diameter 1016 mm. According to the average wall thickness of 20 mm, welded pipe needs to be consumed 269 Tons/km, the first phase of Rudong receiving station requires about 2900 tons of LNG welded pipes, and the distance from the LNG receiving station to the LNG loading and unloading port directly affects the amount of LNG welded pipes. The welded pipes farther away from the port need 3000-4000 tons, and those closer to the port 2000-3000 tons. The construction of LNG receiving stations and gas pipelines has driven the market demand for stainless steel welded pipes for oil and gas transportation.
 
In the future, the domestic stainless steel pipe market for oil and gas transportation will continue to grow rapidly: on the one hand, the projects that have been approved and under construction will generate demand driving forces: on the other hand, with the improvement of the production technology level and related performance of Chinese stainless steel pipe manufacturing enterprises Accumulation, will be able to gradually replace imported high-end stainless steel pipe products, while increasing the export market share. In addition, at present, domestic LNG transportation mainly adopts large-scale LNG carriers and tankers. Due to the limitations of technology and cost, it is temporarily impossible to transport LNG through long-distance pipelines. With the continuous development of new materials and process technologies, the investment cost of LNG cryogenic pipelines The operation and management costs of the unit and the volume of transportation will continue to decrease, making it possible to transport LNG over long distances. Once long-distance liquid transportation is achieved, the market capacity of stainless steel welded pipes for LNG transportation will increase significantly.

Stainless steel pipes for the natural gas industry