The effects of changing coil radius and tube diameter in the simulation of oil-water separation in a coil tube separator.

Abstract

Separating oil and water is a frequent task in the oil and gas industry, and new methods and devices are constantly being designed to accomplish this more effectively. One of the most prevalent devices used is the coil tube separator, in which the separation process takes place between the two-phase fluids, each with its own density, utilising eccentricity acceleration and gravity. In this paper, a numerical simulator based on fluid dynamics calculations is used to survey and study the coil tube separator, modelling the two-phase flow using fluent software based on the Eulerian-Eulerian method. The subject variables such as tube diameter and radius of regression are taken as a focus in order to optimise the device’s efficiency and function. For such optimisation, two targets were taken into consideration. The first is pressure flow drop and the second is rate of separation. To attain maximum performance, the pressure drop in this device should be low, while a high rate of separation is required. The research results showed that every variable has an optimum value: from this work, a tube with a 50 mm diameter and a coil with a 500 mm radius are defined as the most appropriate and optimum options.