Research on wet gas separation method based on swirl and ejection cycle technology

Abstract

Gas-liquid co-production often occurs in the middle and late stages of natural gas production. Efficient wet gas separation is very important in natural gas transportation and measurement. The traditional separation device has a relatively low separation efficiency due to the flow patterns, a new type of pipe separator was designed based on the swirl and ejection cycle technology. A new systematical separation procedure with three main steps was proposed simultaneously. The wet gas was forced to form an annular flow by a swirler. Then, the liquid film flows into the annular gap. The wave layer was introduced into the swirl separation again with the self-circulating ejection system for fine separation finally. Laboratory experiments and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations show that the additional swirl process can decrease the flow pattern influence effectively, and the separation efficiency can increase to more than 90%. The separation efficiency is mainly determined by the gas superficial velocity, and while the velocity of the inlet gas is less than 21 m/s, the separation efficiency is up to 93%. The separation efficiency prediction model was established based on liquid film porosity, and the prediction relative error is less than 10%. The new device, the separation procedure, and the test results can provide constructive technical reference for the real-world pipe separator application.