DEGRADATION OF DRAG REDUCING POLYMERS; EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS

DEGRADATION OF DRAG REDUCING POLYMERS; EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS

Drag reducing polymers are evaluated by their resistance against mechanical shear forces. Higher amounts of drag reduction as well sustainability under turbulent conditions make a polymer as an efficient drag reducer. This study compares the performance of two drag reducing polymers with linear backbone under turbulent flow in a laboratory scale pipe line. Two commercially available water soluble well-known polymeric agents, polyacrylamide and polyethylene oxide, were added to the turbulent flow of water. Variation of pressure drop in the pipe line was then measured for 2 hours to compare the effect of diluted polymeric solutions with the one with water. Polyacrylamide showed better performance compared to polyethylene oxide in terms of both degradation and drag reduction percentage. An experimental analysis with Response Surface Methodology (RSM) to the historical data was then employed to analyze the data.