Eventos Anais de eventos
ENCIT 2016
16th Brazilian Congress of Thermal Sciences and Engineering
The effects of heat transfer and hydrate dispersion formations on the slug flow hydrodynamics
Submission Author:
Carlos Lange Bassani , Bayern
Co-Authors:
Fausto Arinos Barbuto, Amadeu Sum, Rigoberto Morales
Presenter: Carlos Lange Bassani
doi://10.26678/ABCM.ENCIT2016.CIT2016-0096
Abstract
Pipe blockage due to gas hydrate formation is a main concern to the oil and gas industry due to the costs of production impairments or interruptions. Hydrate formation scenarios are usually found in offshore production pipelines, where oil and gas flow along the pipeline as a mixture that may also contain sand and brine. The high pressure conditions and the heat transfer with the external medium – the ocean – may create the necessary conditions for hydrate formation. With this scenario in mind, the present work uses a mechanistic model to understand the effects of heat transfer and hydrate dispersion formations on the multiphase flow hydrodynamics. The model is based on the mass, momentum and energy conservation equations considering that the phases flow in the slug flow pattern – which is, incidentally, the most commonly found flow pattern in the aforementioned scenario. The simulations were carried out for a methane-water mixture flowing along a 1.5 km-length pipeline at a 10 MPa inlet pressure. Three simulation cases were run: one for isothermal flow, one with heat transfer and, lastly, one with heat transfer and hydrate formation. The discussion revolves around on how the slug flow behaves when heat transfer and hydrate formation occur, focusing on the temperature and pressure distributions, the mixture superficial velocity, the slug flow frequency and the slug flow unit cell geometry.
Keywords
Flow assurance, Hydrates, Multiphase flow modeling, Three-phase solid-liquid-gas slug flows, Heat and mass transfer
