Abstract
Pipeline is a conventional, efficient and economic way for oil transportations. The use of a good system for detecting and locating leaks in pipeline contribute significantly to operational safety and cost saving in petroleum industry. This paper aims to study the heavy oil-water flow in vertical ducts including leakage. A transient numerical analysis, using the ANSYS-CFX? 11.0 commercial software is performed. The mathematical modeling considers the effect of drag and gravitational forces between the phases and turbulent flow. Mass flow rate of the phases in the leaking orifice, the pressure drop as a function of the time and the velocity distributions are presented and discussed. We can conclude that volumetric fraction of phases and fluid mixture velocity affect pressure drop and mass flow rate at the leak hole.
Highlights
IntroductionEven the petroleum industry running preventive measures, there is always the possibility of failure, making the industrial plants susceptible to operational accidents with loss of fluid to environment, causing great ecological, social and economic damages, with delay in oil production
The activity of oil production is subject to high risks
This paper aims to study the heavy oil-water flow in vertical ducts including leakage
Summary
Even the petroleum industry running preventive measures, there is always the possibility of failure, making the industrial plants susceptible to operational accidents with loss of fluid to environment, causing great ecological, social and economic damages, with delay in oil production. A proper supervisory system must be capable of detecting leaks in oil installations, enabling immediate action to reduce the impacts of accidents and contributing significantly to operational safety. The simultaneous flow of two immiscible liquids in vertical pipes is encountered in different industrials processes and in the petroleum industry [1]. Many authors have focused their researches in methods of leak detection in pipes on oil production and transport [2,3,4]. In different applications, including oil transportation, accurate locations of the leaks is still very difficult. In present day various leak detection techniques based in the negative pressure wave, acoustic sensors, satellite surveillance, mass and volume balance, analytical model-based method, among others, has been applied
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