Experimental study and numerical simulation of heavy oil viscosity reduction device based on jet cavitation

Abstract

With the increase of exploration resources of crude oil worldwide, how to decompose by recombination or long chain compounds to convert high viscosity heavy and inferior crude oil into high quality low viscosity oil and chemical raw materials has become the focus of the refining industry. Several types of oil were treated to reduce viscosity with a self-built heavy oil viscosity reduction device based on jet cavitation. Meanwhile, the viscosity-decreasing condition of different operating parameters was analyzed by CFD numerical simulation method. The results showed that the viscosity reduction of Saudi heavy oil is the best at 4 MPa, the viscosity reduction rate reaches 46.97%. The numerical simulation and analysis of different kinds of oil products were carried out, and the pressure, gas holdup, velocity, turbulent kinetic energy, mass transfer rate and cavitation number were used as evaluation criteria. Through the numerical simulation and experimental verification, the application of jet cavitation in viscosity reduction of heavy oil is deeply studied, and an innovative evaluation method for viscosity reduction of jet cavitation which integrated various factors is proposed, which provides theoretical guidance and data support for the oil treatment effect and device selection of jet cavitation in industrial application.