Experimental study of two-phase oil – Polymer flow in horizontal flow path

Abstract

Two-phase flow inside the oil and gas wells and flow path lines is a usual occurrence in petroleum and petrochemical studies. Due to its complexity, flow transfer parameters such as hold up and pressure drop and their dependency on the flow regime maps are not well understood yet. This study is aimed at analyzing holdup for oil- water system and evaluation of this parameter by means of Image processing under different available flow regime conditions. In addition, different oil-polymer systems have been studied to evaluate the impact of polymer concentration on transport criteria. The experimental setup used for this study is consisted of a 12 m long Plexiglas pipe with an inner diameter of 30 mm. The results revealed that the only polymer solutions with polymer concentration below than 333 ppm behave as Newtonian fluids. The results showed that low concentration of polymer solution acts as drag reducing agent and reduces the amount of pressure gradient in comparison with oil – water system. Furthermore, the change in flow pattern map between oil-low concentration polymer solution and oil-high concentration polymer solution systems have been analyzed. The results showed that high concentration polymer solution not only leads to higher degrees of pressure drop but also impacts the flow pattern map and more specifically the Three-Layer flow regime cannot be observed in such flow systems. Therefore, a generalized model has been developed to define the flow regime map and the transition criteria between different flow regimes as well as pressure drop and hold up for oil – polymer systems.