Photothermal Clothing for Thermally Preserving Pipeline Transportation of Crude Oil

Pipeline transportation is the most practically used means to deliver crude oil before it enters refining factories. External heating on pipelines is routinely needed in order to make the oil flow easier, especially in areas with low ambient temperature, which has to involve tremendous energy consumption and causes a significant increase in transportation costs. Here, a green and cost-effective strategy of photothermal clothing is conceived by which the pipeline is only warmed by sunlight based on photothermal conversion. The photothermal material is a complex of polypyrrole and polyurethane interpenetrated at the molecular level, which guarantees the elasticity endures considerable deformation when it is bound on pipelines as a form of tubular fibers. Both simulation and thermal tests verify the excellent performance in photothermal warming and heat preservation at low ambient temperature. As a practical demonstration, the rate of frozen crude oil flowing from pipelines is remarkably sped up solely under solar illumination. By a rough estimation, the photothermal pipeline, at a given length of 1 m, is supposed to harvest solar energy with a calorific value that equals combusting natural gas for more than 30 m(3) a year.