Pig tracking

Displacement

Nitrogen displacement, in combination with bi-directional pigging, is a safe, fast and reliable way to remove product from your pipeline in preparation for maintenance. There are number of reasons why product needs to be removed from a pipeline, such as repair, product changeover or product recovery in the case of pipeline deactivation.

We offer a powerful product displacement solution combining gaseous nitrogen and bidirectional pigging. Whether the pipeline contains natural gas, crude oil, gasoline, diesel, liquid petroleum gas, ethylene or other liquids and gases, we can displace it. Nitrogen as a propellant gas is a safe and environmentally friendly solution for the removal of hydrocarbons from pipelines. Our displacement method will leave your pipeline empty, inert and ready for any scheduled project or deactivation.

Benefits of displacement:

  • Removal of hydrocarbons prior to maintenance, shutdown or servicing
  • Product-free pipelines
  • No contamination of product
  • Safer due to use of nitrogen
  • Systems can stay online.

Applied solution

During engineering, a detailed analysis of the pipeline’s profile and process limitations will be made in order to yield the most efficient and cost-effective displacement method. If pipelines are piggable, we provide pig trap installations for a safe and controlled launch and receive. Bi-directional (bidi) pigs consist of a ‘body’ with several sealing and guiding discs. This ensures correct guiding and efficient separation of product inside the pipeline. The bidi pigs, propelled by nitrogen, will displace the product to a specified location.

After maintenance work is completed, we fill the pipeline with product again, using the same pig trap installation, nitrogen and bidi pigs.

Displacement operations for large transport pipelines can be delicate and require detailed planning due to the need for a continuous flow of product at the end of the pipeline. For these projects, our unique high flow mobile nitrogen pump units (24,000 m³/hr per unit), together with highly experienced and knowledgeable field crews, allows us to offer flexible solutions.