Techno-economic analysis of heating techniques for transportation of heavy crude oils by land pipeline

•Three heating-based approaches for transportation of heavy oil were evaluated.•The best heating system resulted to be that with direct fired heaters.•OPEX and CAPEX were 0.32 USD/bbl and 0.78 USD/bbl, respectively.•Price of heavy oil should be 1.1 USD/bbl higher than that at production point. Three approaches (heat exchangers with steam, heat exchangers with thermal oil, and direct fired heaters) were analyzed for heating pipeline to transport a heavy crude oil (viscosity of 62,745 cSt a 15.6 °C, and 11.78° API gravity). The selected pipeline has a length of 62.7 km and transports 33.12 m3/h (5000 BPD) of heavy crude oil. With the calculated temperature drop (4.39 °C/km) and pressure drop (0.25 kg/cm2/km), five heating and pumping points each 12.53 km were determined to maintain the required temperature and pressure for the transportation of heavy crude oil. For each heating system, mass and energy balance was done to calculate the size of equipment and utilities consumption. Capital expenditures (CAPEX) and operational expenditures (OPEX) were obtained to identify which heating system exhibits the lowest operating costs. The results indicate that the best heating system is with direct fired heaters from both technical and economic points of view (lower number of equipment, easy and flexible operation, commercial experience, and lower consumption of utilities). OPEX and CAPEX for heating system is with direct fired heaters were 0.32 USD/bbl and 0.78 USD/bbl, respectively. This indicates that the price of heavy crude oil should be 1.1 USD/bbl higher than that at the production point. By means of a sensitivity analysis, it was demonstrated that temperature drop is the determining variable that affects the number of heating points. Increasing temperature from 4.39 to 7 °C/km increased the number of heating point from 5 to 8. A 50% increase of OPEX (utilities) resulted the total costs to be 35% higher with respect to the base case for the evaluated heating systems.