Experimental and numerical simulation study on the erosion behavior of the elbow of gathering pipeline in shale gas field

Abstract

During the production period of shale gas, proppant particles and rock debris are produced together, which will seriously erode the elbows of gathering pipelines. In response to this problem, this paper takes the elbow of the gathering pipeline in the Changning Shale Gas Field as an example to test the erosion rate and material removal mechanism of the test piece at different angles of the elbow through experiments and compares the four erosion models with the experimental results. Through analysis, it is found that the best prediction model for quartz sand-carbon steel erosion is the Oka model. Based on the Oka model, FLUENT software was used to simulate and analyze the law of erosion of the elbow of the gas gathering pipeline under different gas flow velocities, gas gathering pressure, particle size, length of L1, and bending directions of the elbow. And a spiral pipeline structure is proposed to reduce the erosion rate of the elbow under the same working conditions. The results show that this structure can reduce erosion by 34%.