Abstract
Vane angle configuration is considerably affecting the internal flow behavior and separation performance of a concurrent axial inlet liquid–liquid hydrocyclone. This study was carried out to improve the design of the swirl generator by optimizing the vane’s deflection angle in an oil/water axial inlet hydrocyclone separator. Angles ranging from 37° to 75° were examined at various operational conditions, including mixture temperature, mixture flow rate, and water-to-oil ratio. Two analysis techniques have been coupled to achieve the aim. First, design of experiment by the response surface method was utilized to generate a combination of run/boundary conditions of swirler vane angles, inlet mixture temperatures, flow rates, and concentrations. The obtained 15 run/boundary conditions were adopted as cases for computational fluid dynamics simulation to determine the separation efficiency, tangential velocity and pressure drop of each case using ANSYS Fluent software. The optimization results show that the swirl generator with a 45° deflection angle generated slightly higher tangential velocity compared with higher and lower vane deflection angles. The separation efficiency obtained by using the 45° swirl generator was higher than other angles, in spite that the turbulence intensity is slightly higher at 45° compared to other vane angles.
Highlights
Numerous oil wells are subjected to the waterflooding technique to maintain reservoir pressure and exploit it to the maximum, especially in shallow offshore and deep water
The flow distribution inside the Liquid/liquid hydrocyclone (LLHC) has been determined by examining the separation efficiency, pressure drop, radial distributions of the tangential velocity profiles, turbulence intensity and static pressure
An effective and successful analysis and optimization procedure are developed in the current study by integration of design of experiments (DOE), computational fluid dynamics (CFD), and response surface method (RSM) techniques
Summary
Numerous oil wells are subjected to the waterflooding technique to maintain reservoir pressure and exploit it to the maximum, especially in shallow offshore and deep water. Liquid/liquid hydrocyclone (LLHC) technology is adopted to tackle the problem for oil/water separation technique. Two types of LLHC separation technology exist, and the fundamental physics behind each separation process is centrifugal force. This force depends on the input and output in the cyclone either tangentially or axially and the outputs from the top or bottom, which is referred to as countercurrent or concurrent axial flow, respectively. Axial concurrent flow cyclones have a wide utilization scope in the future of the oil industry both at surface and downhole production intervals (Kitoh 1991; Dohnal and Hajek 2016). In an axial flow separator, centrifugal force is achieved by a liquid mixture flowing through a
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