Eventos Anais de eventos
ENCIT 2016
16th Brazilian Congress of Thermal Sciences and Engineering
AN ANALYSIS ON THE DYNAMICS OF A GAS BUBBLE IN A CENTRIFUGAL PUMP
Submission Author:
Moisés Marcelino Neto , PR
Co-Authors:
FELIPE CARLOS ANCAJIMA JIMENEZ, Dalton Bertoldi, Rigoberto Morales, Henrique Stel, Renzo Harkov Gutierrez Sabino
Presenter: FELIPE CARLOS ANCAJIMA JIMENEZ
doi://10.26678/ABCM.ENCIT2016.CIT2016-0680
Abstract
Centrifugal pumps are widely used in the oil industry as an artificial lift technique. The existing gas in some oil reservoirs can cause head degradation in such pumps. The performance deterioration translates in less ability to raise pressure, which reduces the well production rate of oil and results in economic losses. Many studies evaluate the influence of operating parameters on the performance deterioration, such as the inlet pressure, the inlet void fraction and rotational velocity. However, few works provide a theoretical analysis of the physics of the problem. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) can be very useful to analyse the phenomena that take place inside the pump. In this sense, this work proposes a numerical study of the dynamics of the gas bubbles inside the first stage of a radial centrifugal pump impeller (Imbil ITAP 65-330/2). For this purpose, a particle-tracking approach is employed through a commercial CFD software. The study aims to analyse the relevance of the drag force, the force due to the pressure gradient, the virtual mass force, the turbulent dissipation force, the wall lubrication force and the lift force acting on a bubble flowing through the liquid in the rotating impeller channel. Numerical results are compared with previous experimental data obtained for two-phase flow of water and air in the same pump model. The behaviour of the bubbles inside the impeller, the role of each force in their motion and the functional relations between those forces and the operating conditions of the pump are all interests of this investigation.
Keywords
gas bubbles, dynamics, centrifugal pump, impeller
