Search

Sand erosion is a severe problem that many oil and gas producers have to deal with. Therefore, it is desirable to have a model that can predict erosion for various operating conditions. Predicting erosion is a complex problem due to the number of parameters that are involved. The complexity of predicting erosion increases when producing or transporting multiphase fluids through pipelines. It is well known that the characteristics of multiphase flow affect sand erosion in the pipelines. This work specifically concentrates on measuring multiphase-slug characteristics using a measurement technique based on wire-mesh sensor. A 16 x 16 dual wire-mesh sensor is installed before a standard 76.2 mm (3-inch) bend for a horizontally oriented pipe. The distance by which the dual Wire Mesh Sensors are separated is 32 mm. The local void fraction is extracted where horizontal and vertical wires of the sensor intersect, utilizing the differences in conductance between two different fluids. The fluids used in these multiphase experiments were air and either water or water-CMC mixture to increase the liquid viscosity. Experiments were conducted, where superficial gas velocity ranged from 9.1 m/s to 35 m/s, and superficial liquid velocity was 0.76 m/s. Three different liquid viscosities (1 cP, 10 cP and 40 cP) were used for performing the experiments. The void fraction data obtained using the dual Wire Mesh Sensors is utilized to achieve the interfacial velocities of the liquid slug. Further analysis of the data is conducted to obtain other slug characteristics such as the liquid slug body length distribution, and frequency of the slugs. Additionally, liquid slug fronts and slug tails were identified. The differences in the characteristics of slug flow and pseudo-slug flow are addressed. Finally, the slug characteristics were utilized in order to enhance the understanding of sand particle impact velocities with the pipe wall in the horizontal pipelines.

Slug flow is a very common flow pattern encountered during the production of petroleum fluids. Likewise, pipe bends are often used to change the direction of the fluids during transportation. This work focuses on comparing various slug characteristics before and after a pipe bend. For this investigation, a dual Wire Mesh Sensor (WMS) is utilized. Measurements are made by placing the sensor before and after the bend. In order to obtain higher spatial and temporal resolution of the signals, a sampling frequency of 10,000 Hz is used. Experiments were conducted in a 76.2 mm (3-inch) diameter pipe utilizing air and water as fluids. Effect of fluid viscosity is also studied by conducting the experiments using three different liquid viscosities: 1, 10 and 40 cP. The experiments were conducted with superficial gas velocity ranging from 9.1 m/s to 35 m/s, and superficial liquid velocity ranged from 0.45 to 0.76 m/s. The three-dimensional time series void data from the Wire-Mesh sensor before and after the bend are analyzed to obtain averaged void fractions, structure of the slugs, void in liquid slugs, bubble size distributions, and radial profiles of gas velocity. Also, this study presents the differences in the void fraction distributions in slugs and pseudo slugs. Since pseudo slugs occur between slug and annular regimes, this information can further the understanding of the effect of flow characteristics on erosion occurring from solid particles for this flow pattern. Finally, from this comprehensive analysis the influence of the bend on the gas and liquid distributions over the cross-section has been discussed.