Experimental investigation of oil\u2013water flow in the horizontal and vertical sections of a continuous transportation pipe

Jianlei Yang,Lifei Mi,Peng Li,Xiaobing Lu,Qing Li,Xuhui Zhang

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-99660-8

Abstract

A series of experiments were conducted to investigate flow pattern transitions and concentration distribution during simultaneous pipe flow of oil–water two-phase flow through the horizontal and vertical sections. The flowing media applied were white mineral oil and distilled water. Superficial oil and water velocities were between 0 and 0.57 m/s. Flow pattern maps revealed that the horizontal and vertical sections of the pipe lead to different flow pattern characteristics under the same flow conditions. The original contributions of this work are that a transition mechanism for predicting the boundary between oil-in-water (O/W) flow and water-in-oil (W/O) in oil–water two-phase flow was obtained. The effects of input water cut, oil and water superficial velocities on the concentration distribution of the dispersed phase were studied. The empirical formulas for the phase holdup based on the drift-flux model were obtained. The predicted results agreed well with those of the experimental data, especially for the O/W flow pattern.

Highlights

A series of experiments were conducted to investigate flow pattern transitions and concentration distribution during simultaneous pipe flow of oil–water two-phase flow through the horizontal and vertical sections
The identification of flow regimes was based on both visual observation and interpretation of transient flow signals. Flores[4] mainly identified water-dominated pattern and oil-dominated pattern for oil–water flow in vertical and horizontal pipes
The dispersed flow (W/O and O/W) and stratified flow have been identified over the range of oil and water superficial velocities

Summary

Introduction

A series of experiments were conducted to investigate flow pattern transitions and concentration distribution during simultaneous pipe flow of oil–water two-phase flow through the horizontal and vertical sections. Many researchers have been studied the simultaneous oil and water flow in horizontal or vertical pipes. Piela et al.[5] studied the phase inversion of oil–water flow experimentally through a horizontal pipe loop. Experimental data showed that the phase inversion occurred at the oil volume fraction of 0.9 for the water-to-oil inversion, and the pressure drop increases at the inversion compared to the initial pressure drop. The PDF of the volume fraction of the water phase is used to identify changes in the flow pattern. The different flow pattern images were collected through oil-in-water flow experiments in a vertical 20 mm inner diameter Plexiglas pipe. Under the same flow parameters, it is necessary to study the different flow behaviors in horizontal and vertical p ipelines[3]

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