Analysis and Evaluation of Oil Well Riser with Different Exit Geometries Using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFDs)

Abstract

The exploration of large oil fields or wells in deep waters for crude oil and gas has generated immense challenges within the oil and gas industry that has caused remarkable developments in methods of optimizing production of oil and gas. This research work presents the analysis and evaluation of the flow dynamics of an exit riser configurations using computational fluid dynamics (CFDs). STAR-CCM+ computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tool was employed in this research work. To model the flow in the exit configuration, the geometry of the exit configuration was created using CATIA. The CATIA model saves as IGES format were imported into the STAR CCM+ as regions with the one boundary per face setting, the one region per body setting was also selected and the sewing tolerance was set to 0.001. Four different exit configurations were analyzed for the single phase flow. The results obtained show that the flow in the exit configuration 3 converges faster. Also, from the pressure plot it is discovered that the pressure remained steady until it reaches the junction where a division of the flow occurs. The total pressure and the static pressure are low for exit 3 and lowest for exit 4. For companies where the computational cost is of paramount importance, exit 4 should be considered if oil-field problems and monitoring are done via CFD tools.