Abstract
In the oil exploitation, produced fluids are composed of oil, gas, water and sand (depending on the reservoir location). The presence of sand in flow oil leads to several industrial problems for example: erosion and accumulation in valves and pipeline. Thus, it is necessary to stop production for manual cleaning of equipments and pipes. These facts have attracted attention of academic and industrial areas, enabling the appearing of new technologies or improvement of the water/oil/sand separation process. One equipment that has been used to promote phase separation is the hydrocyclone due to high performance of separation and required low cost to installation and maintenance. In this sense, the purpose of this work is to study numerically the effect of geometric parameters (vortex finder diameter) of the hydrocyclone and sand concentration on the inlet fluid separation process. A numerical solution of the governing equations was obtained by the ANSYS CFX-11 commercial code. Results of the streamlines, pressure drop and separation efficiency on the hydrocyclone are presented and analyzed. It was observed that the particles concentration and geometry affect the separation efficiency of the hydrocyclone.
Highlights
Produced water can be defined as any water that is present in a reservoir of the hydrocarbon reserve
EFFECT OF SOLID CONCENTRATION IN THE INLET SECTION ON THE SEPARATION PROCESS To illustrate the numerical results of the approach described in the previous section, the streamline of sand, oil and water are shown in Figures 3, 4 and 5, respectively
The proposed model provides a convenient way to study the effects of the different solid concentrations in the inlet section and different hydrocyclone overflow diameter on the separation performance;
Summary
Produced water can be defined as any water that is present in a reservoir of the hydrocarbon reserve. During the production phase water flows together with the crude oil or natural gas to the surface The composition of this water usually includes a mixture of liquid or gaseous hydrocarbons, dissolved solids (carbonates, sulfates, sodium chloride, potassium chloride, calcium chloride and magnesium chloride) and suspended solids Solids produced can contain carbonates, clays, corrosion products and others precipitated or suspended solids resultant of oilfields These solids can influence the efficiency of oil-water separators and sometimes can form oily sludges in production equipment a periodic maintenance is required
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