Pun Kul, Hamad Faik, Ahmed Tariq, Ugwu Johnson, Najim Safa, Eyers James, Lawson Gary, Russell Paul
School of Computing, Engineering & Digital Technologies, Teesside University, Middlesbrough, Tees Valley, TS1 3BX, UK.
Electrical Engineering Department, College of Engineering, Basrah University, Basrah Iraq.
Heliyon. 2023 Apr 17;9(4):e15397. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e15397. eCollection 2023 Apr.
The critical design parameter when sizing a separator is the size of oil droplets in the water phase. This study improves the design of a separator by investigating the parameters that control droplet size, frequency, and distribution. Experimental work was performed to investigate the effect of flow rates and oil layer thickness on these parameters. Experiments were performed using a transparent laboratory separator to allow the measurement of droplet properties. The Design of the Experiment (DOE) method with the Taguchi analysis was applied to investigate statistically if droplet properties are solely a function of the independent variables or if they interact. The findings show that the results can be modelled using Gaussian distributions. Droplet size distribution and the number of droplets produced are functions of the interaction between oil flow rate and oil pad thickness. The oil flow rate dominates the droplet size though layer thickness has a minor effect. The number of droplets (Frequency) increases with both oil and water flow rates but decreases with oil pad thickness. There are clear interactions between all variables resulting in different droplet frequencies for combined effects. The distribution of the droplet sizes is controlled by oil layer thickness, where the spread is seen to rise with thickness. However, interactions between the fluid flows and oil pad thickness give rise to different droplet distributions if either variable were changed on its own.
在确定分离器尺寸时，关键的设计参数是水相中油滴的大小。本研究通过研究控制油滴大小、频率和分布的参数来改进分离器的设计。进行了实验工作，以研究流速和油层厚度对这些参数的影响。实验使用透明的实验室分离器进行，以便测量油滴特性。应用带有田口分析的实验设计（DOE）方法，从统计学角度研究油滴特性是否仅是自变量的函数，或者它们之间是否存在相互作用。研究结果表明，结果可以用高斯分布进行建模。油滴大小分布和产生的油滴数量是油流速和油垫层厚度之间相互作用的函数。尽管层厚有较小影响，但油流速主导着油滴大小。油滴数量（频率）随油和水的流速增加而增加，但随油垫层厚度增加而减少。所有变量之间存在明显的相互作用，导致组合效应下有不同的油滴频率。油滴大小的分布由油层厚度控制，其分布范围随厚度增加而增大。然而，如果单独改变任何一个变量，流体流动与油垫层厚度之间的相互作用会导致不同的油滴分布。
