Abstract
The application of a hydrocyclone to recycle NGH and desand during NGH exploitation is a novel idea. The flow field and performance of this hydrocyclone is in the frontier of the research in this field and is unclear so far. This research aimed to reveal the flow field characteristics and performance of NGH downhole hydrocyclones. In this paper, flow field, solid phase particle volume distribution and separation efficiency were investigated according to the two objectives of NGH recovery efficiency and sand removal efficiency with different inlet velocities by computational fluid simulations (CFD)-FLUENT software. The results show that the short circuit flow contributed to the recovery of NGH. Axial velocity is a decisive factor in balancing the two objectives of NGH recovery efficiency and sand removal efficiency. In addition, the same as those in traditional hydrocyclones, the static pressure, tangential velocity and turbulence intensity play key roles in separation performance, hydrocyclone performance can be improved by increasing the inlet velocity. On the other hand, most separation efficiencies were greater than 80%, when the particle size was larger than 15 µm, and the differential pressure was less than 0.6 MPa. Therefore, all the above results confirm that hydrocyclone has good performance in NGH exploitation, and the basis of its structural design and optimization are provided.
Highlights
Natural gas hydrate (NGH), known as “Flammable Ice”, is considered as a potential clean new energy resource because its combustion only produces hydrated carbon dioxide, and its reserves are huge [1]
The flow field, solid phase particle volume distribution and separation efficiency were investigated according to the two objectives of NGH recovery efficiency and sand removal efficiency with different inlet velocities by computational fluid dynamic (CFD)-FLUENT software
The inlet velocity directly affects the intensity the centrifugal force performance inlet velocity directly affects the intensity of theofcentrifugal force field field in the hydrocyclone and is an important criterion of the hydrocyclone’s performance
Summary
Natural gas hydrate (NGH), known as “Flammable Ice”, is considered as a potential clean new energy resource because its combustion only produces hydrated carbon dioxide, and its reserves are huge [1]. With the improvement of computer technology, computational fluid dynamic (CFD) technology has made remarkable progress in the numerical simulation of hydrocyclones The advantage of this method is that can the complex flow field in a hydrocyclone be better understood but experimental time and cost can be saved. Very few of them have included the flow characteristics and separation process of NGH hydrocyclone using the computational fluid dynamics (CFDs) method. The objective of this paper is to reveal the flow field characteristics and performance of NGH downhole hydrocyclones. The flow field, solid phase particle volume distribution and separation efficiency were investigated according to the two objectives of NGH recovery efficiency and sand removal efficiency with different inlet velocities by computational fluid dynamic (CFD)-FLUENT software. The distribution of turbulence intensity, static pressure, tangential velocity, axial velocity, radial velocity, solid phase particle volume, NGH recovery efficiency and sand removal efficiency were obtained
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