Abstract
The effect of temperature on oil–water separations is studied in this paper, focusing on the changed penetration velocities of water droplets on the separation membrane in a horizontal separator. A compact numerical scheme is developed based on the phase-field model, and the temperature effect is first theoretically analyzed regarding the key thermodynamic properties that may affect the separation performance. The computational scenario is designed based on practical horizontal separators in the oil field, and the droplet motions in the oil–water two-phase flow are simulated using our scheme under various operation conditions. It was found that a higher temperature may result in a faster penetration of the water droplets, and a larger density difference in the oil–water system is also preferred to accelerate the separation using membranes. Furthermore, increasing the operation temperature is proved to benefit the separation of water and heavy oil.
Highlights
The super-hydrophilic and super-oleophobic membranes are placed at the lower-right corner of the separator domain, with a size of 1 × 50 meshes representing a flow boundary only for the water phase
Oil–water separation is an important process in the energy industry by which to
The membrane separation method stands out is production
Summary
Oil–water two-phase flow is commonly seen throughout the entire process of crude oil production and transportation [1]. Oil–water two-phase flow is a problem in other industries including machinery manufacturing and food processing [7], while oil is considered a form of pollution and should be separated before pure water usage and emission. A number of numerical studies have been reported in recent years focusing on multi-phase flow simulations informing the separations in the field [23,24], and a breakthrough model of Membranes 2022, 12, x FOR PEER REVIEW. An oil–water two-phase flow model will be developed in this paper, with proved to be effective in the membrane separation mechanism. Phase model will engineering be developeddemands, in this paper, with a quick solver tomotions meet engineering water separators, and to investigate the effect of temperature and other factors on permedemands, to simulate the droplet motions in the oil–water separators, and to investigate ation status into the membrane surface.
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