BARBOSA, Enivaldo Santos.
Abstract:
The oil industry has traditionally been supported by the use of conventional separators
devices based on the gravity effect which are generally bulky and provide
high residence time. The hydrocyclone have been commonly used in oil-water separation
by the oil industry due to high processing capacity, lower maintenance cost
and minor physical space to installation. However has been observed the presence of
sand and /or gas during oil production and transportation. For this reason, the need
for developing of advanced technologies has strongly arisen, intending to separate
sand/oil/water/gas. In this context, the present work aims to study the separation
process of sand/water/gas from oil stream, using a hydrocyclone. The research
were developed using the commercial package ANSYS CFX 12. The used threedimensional
mathematical model considers turbulent and steady state flow and it is
based on Eulerian-Eulerian approach for single-phase (water) and multiphase (wateroil,
sand-water-oil, sand - water - oil - gas) cases. The influence of turbulence models
( – , RNG – standard and modified, SST and RSM–SSG), and geometric aspects
of the physical parameters in predicting of flow behavior in the hydrocyclone
were evaluated. Results of axial and tangential velocity profiles, tangential velocity,
pressure and volumetric fraction distributions, separation efficiency and pressure
drop are presented and analyzed. One can find the three-dimensional flow aspect
and reasonable approximation of numerical results with experimental data of the
radial distribution of tangential and axial velocity components. The evaluated hydrocyclone was able to separate adequately water, sand and gas from the oil flow
with remotion efficiency of 33.07%, 92.52% and 3.81%, respectively, to a four-phase
mixture and inlet volumetric flow rate of 8.5 m3/h in the hydrocyclone.
