Eventos Anais de eventos
ENCIT 2016
16th Brazilian Congress of Thermal Sciences and Engineering
NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF TWO-PHASE SLUG FLOW USING A HYBRID CODE BASED ON SLUG TRACKING AND SLUG CAPTURING METHODOLOGIES
Submission Author:
Vinicius Almeida , PR , United States
Co-Authors:
Marco Germano Conte, Fausto Arinos Barbuto, Rigoberto Morales
Presenter: Vinicius Almeida
doi://10.26678/ABCM.ENCIT2016.CIT2016-0520
Abstract
Slug flow is the prevailing flow pattern in oil and gas production. In this kind of flow the phases are unevenly distributed into two different structures: an elongated gas bubble and a liquid slug. The intermittent behavior of those structures affects the oil and gas production, plays a decisive role on equipment design and may ultimately cause operational problems. Different methodologies to simulate slug flows are found in the literature. In this article a methodology that simultaneously uses a slug capturing and a slug tracking models will be presented. The slug capturing code developed at NUEM uses a simplified two-fluid model which solves for the gas domain using a finite-difference scheme whereas the liquid domain is modeled similarly to the shallow-water equations. This code can simulate the transition from stratified to slug flow and the evolution of the slug flow structures. A slug tracking approach led to the development of another computer code that uses the continuity and momentum equations applied to the unit cell – a structure composed by a liquid slug followed by an elongated gas bubble. This model simulates slug flows at relatively low computational effort. For the new hybrid model, the two-fluid model will be used to simulate the slug initiation whereas the slug tracking model will be used to simulate the slug propagation of a horizontal flow in a 40-m long, 0.026-m diameter pipe, and the results will be compared with those obtained from the slug capturing code.
Keywords
Slug Tracking, slug capturing, Two-phase Flow, Slug Tracking, slug capturing, Two-phase Flow, Slug Flow, slug capturing, Slug Tracking, Two-phase Flow
