Coupling relations and early-warning for equipment chain in long-distance pipeline

Ensuring the safety of long-distance pipelines is an important work for petroleum and petrochemical enterprise. The pump unit and pipeline are taken as an overall research object firstly in this paper. A pipeline leakage detection model is built based on coupling analysis on the state of pump unit. The coupling relations between pump unit and pipeline are uncovered through the research on external characteristics of centrifugal pump and the hydraulic characteristics of long distance pipelines. These relations are verified by theoretical study and field experiment. Compared with the traditional method, the proposed method reduces the high false alarm rate which caused by coupling state of pump unit. The result shows that the proposed method can guarantee the effectiveness and accuracy of safety operation in long-distance pipeline. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.