Zhang Jian, Wu Qi-Lin, Liu Shuo, Xu Jing-Yu
Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
Shenzhen Branch Company, China National Offshore Oil Corporation, Shenzhen 518067, China.
ACS Omega. 2020 Aug 17;5(34):21443-21450. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.0c01805. eCollection 2020 Sep 1.
The T-junction is a novel type of separator used in the petroleum and gas industry. It is used to achieve the gas-liquid or liquid-liquid two-phase separation. To obtain an applicative T-junction separator, in the present study, the gas-liquid two-phase separation characteristics in multiple inclined T-junctions were investigated through a series of numerical simulations and field experiments. Two representative multiphase modes, namely, the Euler model and the mixture model, were chosen for this study. Comparisons of the field experiments were made to obtain a highly accurate simulation model. The mixture model was chosen to be better suited for this study. It is used to investigate the gas-liquid two-phase flow and the separation behaviors, which include the effect of inlet flow velocity, inlet bubble diameter, and the split ratio of two outlets. The results indicate that the best flow split ratio exists when the two-phase separation reaches the best consequence, and the best flow split ratio changes when the separation demands of gas or liquid are different. Furthermore, the separation efficiency keeps decreasing as the inlet velocity is increased. Hence, the inlet mixture velocity should be reduced to improve the gas-liquid two-phase separation. More specifically, to obtain a better separation for the same throughput, the size of the T-junction should be increased. Moreover, the separation efficiency increases as the inlet bubble diameter increases. Consequently, the results can be used to design the T-junction as an industrial separator, which can then be directly used in petroleum and gas production.
T型接头是石油和天然气行业中使用的一种新型分离器。它用于实现气液或液液两相分离。为了获得一种适用的T型接头分离器，在本研究中，通过一系列数值模拟和现场实验，研究了多个倾斜T型接头中的气液两相分离特性。本研究选择了两种具有代表性的多相流模式，即欧拉模型和混合模型。通过与现场实验进行比较，以获得高精度的模拟模型。结果表明，混合模型更适合本研究。它用于研究气液两相流和分离行为，包括入口流速、入口气泡直径和两个出口分流比的影响。结果表明，当两相分离达到最佳效果时，存在最佳分流比，并且当气体或液体的分离要求不同时，最佳分流比会发生变化。此外，随着入口流速的增加，分离效率不断降低。因此，应降低入口混合物流速以提高气液两相分离效果。更具体地说，为了在相同产量下获得更好的分离效果，应增大T型接头的尺寸。此外，分离效率随着入口气泡直径的增加而提高。因此，这些结果可用于将T型接头设计为工业分离器，然后可直接用于石油和天然气生产。
