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ENCIT 2020
18th Brazilian Congress of Thermal Sciences and Engineering
CHARACTERIZATION OF AIR-WATER-OIL THREE-PHASE HORIZONTAL FLOWS
Submission Author:
Carlos Keiichi Tanikawa da Silva , SP
Co-Authors:
Carlos Keiichi Tanikawa da Silva, Charlie van der Geest, Daiane Iceri, Hermes Vazzoler Junior, Juliana Cenzi, Marcelo Souza de Castro
Presenter: Carlos Keiichi Tanikawa da Silva
doi://10.26678/ABCM.ENCIT2020.CIT20-0613
Abstract
For the oil industry, it is of utmost importance to obtain knowledge about three-phase flow characteristics, such as flow patterns and pressure drop. This paper will investigate and classify three-phase flow patterns, based on visual methods through high-speed camera and pressure drop comparison. The procedure was performed in a horizontal steel tube with 15 meters length, with 51.1 mm and 82.1 mm i.d., with a mineral oil with a viscosity of 68.4 mPa.s. The experiment consists in fixing the superficial velocities of oil and water, in order to keep the water cut of the flow at 33% and 60%, and increasing the gas superficial velocity, to obtain different flow patterns. The identified flow patterns were captured using a high-speed camera, and those that were not visually differentiable, a method based on pressure drop analysis was used. The last method was based on comparing the three-phase pressure drop with single-phase pressure drop of oil and water, thus allowing to determine which phase is predominant and whether there was emulsion generated. The patterns identified were intermittent-stratified (INT-ST), intermittent-water continuous (INT-WC), intermittent-oil continuous (INT-OC) and intermittent-dual continuous (INT-DC). The flow patterns presented in 33% water cut showed an emulsion with the predominance of the oil phase, the analysis of pressure drop was necessary. Oppositely, in the flow patterns for 60% of water cut, the analysis made through the images of the high-speed camera were enough. However, the method used in this work for the classification of flow patterns based on videos and the analysis of the pressure drop proved to be accurate and useful for three-phase flow.
Keywords
Three-phase flow, multi-phase, flow pattern, horizontal flow, pressure drop
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