A joint meeting, the latest in a series, has taken place at the grounds of OJSC Gazprom. Presiding at the event were Gazprom’s Management Committee Chairman Alexey Miller and the Chairman of the Executive Board of LLC MC Rusnano Anatoly Chubais. The parties discussed the adoption and use of innovative products at Gazprom’s facilities.
The participants have agreed to build two pilot sections of pipeline out of composite materials. The first will be a 90-km reserve branch supplying gas to the towns of Salekhard, Labytnangi and the settlement of Kharp in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. According to the plan, the stretch will be constructed using 300, 700 and 1000 mm diameter pipes designed to operate at a pressure of 7.5 MPa. The second is a 14-km reserve underwater branch crossing the river Ob at a location in the Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug and serving as a part of the Yamburg-Tula-2 trunk pipeline. In order to build it, 1200 mm diameter pipes would have to be produced, also designed to withstand a working pressure of 7.5 MPa.
LLC Gazprom VNIIGAZ will calculate the engineering requirements to which the composite pipes and fittings will have to be built to meet the demands imposed by the operating conditions. Based on these requirements, HC Composite will fabricate sample pipes and components and design requisite technologies that will be subjected to comprehensive testing. Positive results in the tests will signal a go-ahead for the construction of the first pipeline stretch, followed by the second.
The parties at the meeting have also discussed the industrial use of membrane technology by Gazprom. Its subsidiaries, for instance, operate over 300 nitrogen generators produced by CJSC Grasys. Grasys is also taking part in the ongoing testing of a pilot membrane facility designed to extract helium from natural gas and installed at Gazprom’s Kovykta field. One other issue discussed was the possibility of using the membrane modules produced by the Russian company CJSC RM Nanotech as components of water treatment facilities.
