Experimental Study of Square Inlets Effect on the Performances of Gas–Liquid Cylindrical Cyclone Separators (GLCC)

Abstract

In the gas-oil field, the gas-liquid cylindrical cyclone (GLCC) separator has potentially replaced the traditional separator that is used over the century. It is also interesting for petroleum companies in recent years because of the effect of the oil world price. However, the behavior of phases in the equipment is very rapid, complex, and unsteady, which may cause the difficulty of enhancing the performance of the separation phases. The much research demonstrates that the geometry and the number of the inlet is probably the most important factor that impacts directly to the performance of separation of phases of the device. The main goal of the research paper is to deeply understand the effect of different geometrical configurations of the square inlet on hydrodynamics and performances for two phases flow (air-water). Two different inlet configurations are constructed, namely: One square inlet with the gradually reduced nozzle and two symmetric square inlets with the gradually reduced nozzle. As a result, the separation efficiency of the device will be higher when using two symmetric inlets, and we suggest the application of two symmetric square inlets type that is the same angle of inclination and the area of the nozzle with the unique inlet configuration to improve separation efficiency in GLCC. Such an inlet structure leads to lower swirl intensity decay than one inlet configuration. It also creates a more axis-symmetric flow at the centerline, which would improve the uplift of air bubbles in the performance of GLCC. Besides, this study can be viewed as a padding step to optimizing the operative parameters of GLCC in further study.