Eventos Anais de eventos
COBEM 2023
27th International Congress of Mechanical Engineering
EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF HORIZONTAL TWO-PHASE SLUG FLOW WITH HIGH DENSITY GASES
Submission Author:
Matheus Vitor Rocha Pereira , PR
Co-Authors:
Bruna Patricia Naidek, Matheus Vitor Rocha Pereira, Isabela Simões Veiga, Eduardo Mateus Baggio, ROBERTO FONSECA JUNIOR, Moisés Marcelino Neto, Rigoberto Morales
Presenter: Bruna Patricia Naidek
doi://10.26678/ABCM.COBEM2023.COB2023-0511
Abstract
During the offshore production of oil and gas, it is commonly observed multiphase flow. Due to the difficulty of modeling multiphase flow, it is common to simplify it to a two-phase liquid-gas phase flow. In this scenario, the gas phase is often of high density with similar magnitude to the liquid phase. This condition greatly differs from the regularly studied system of water and air, where the gas phase is of a much smaller density compared to the liquid one. Consequently, it is of great interest to investigate how the high gas density will affect the slug flow parameters, since this flow pattern is the most reported one to occur in oil and gas production in the petroleum companies. Slug flow is characterized by the intermittent repetition of the structure called unit cell, formed by an elongated bubble followed by a liquid slug. Therefore, this study aims to evaluate experimentally the liquid-gas two-phase slug flow for cases with density ratios ranging from 2.3 to 142, using mineral oil and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) as fluid models. Due to the increase in the pressure in the system, the liquid phase was considered a mixture of the mineral oil and sulfur hexafluoride dissolved in it. The liquid properties was estimated with Henry’s law and the liquid viscosity varied between 1 and 2 cP. The pressures ranged from 1 to 35 bar and temperatures from 5°C to 45ºC. For each case, several phase velocities were applied and the slug flow parameters and the pressure gradient were obtained. The experimental loop consisted of 60-m long stainless steel circuit with a 26-mm I.D., with 7 measuring stations and 4 visualization windows along the pipe. In each measuring station was installed a pressure and temperature sensors and two capacitive sensors that allows to measure slug flow parameters such as bubble velocity, slug frequency, liquid holdup and slug and bubble lengths. It was observed that the slug flow region was much smaller compared with air-water experiments.
Keywords
experimental analysis, Slug Flow, Two-phase Flow, influence of gas density
