Bio-polymers for Improving Liquid Flow in Pipelines - A Review and Future Work Opportunities

• Main Authors: Abdulbari, Hayder A., Ainoon, Shabirin, Nour, A. H.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2014
• Subjects: TP Chemical technology
• Online Access: http://umpir.ump.edu.my/id/eprint/6152/1/Bio-Polymers%20for%20Improving%20Liquid%20Flow%20in%20Pipelines%E2%80%94A%20Review%20and%20Future%20Work%20Opportunities.pdf; http://umpir.ump.edu.my/id/eprint/6152/; http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jiec.2013.07.050

Several decades following Tom's discoveries on polymeric drag reducing agents (DRA) continue to see research efforts to produce robust and shear-stable DRA. Most efforts revolve around established artificial polymers, but questions have been raised recently about their environmental impact and safety. As such, a large number of researchers are looking into natural materials especially bio-polymers as substitutes. Several bio-polymers are found to exhibit drag reducing capabilities in aqueous media. All these factors suggest that bio-polymers would make a suitable alternative to artificial DRAs. This paper aims to present several works to-date on bio-polymer DRAs, and expose new possibilities.