Estudo numérico do transporte de óleos pesados em tubos lubrificados por água.

Abstract

The high viscosity heavy oil transport is one of the main technological challenges for the oil industry. This fact is related with the high pressure drop due to the viscous effects of this type of oil. The aim of this work is a numerical study of the heavy oil transport using the parietal lubrication by water technique well known as core-annular flow, using computational code CFX 10®. The mathematical model considers the mixture model to describe (waterheavy oil) two-phase flow, considering a two dimensional, transient and isothermal flow. We consider laminar flow to oil and turbulent flow to water, and we have used the k-ε model. The governing equations were solved numerically by finite volume method, using the trilinear interpolation scheme for the convective terms. Results of the velocity, pressure and volume fraction distribution of the phases are presented end analyzed. Results show clearly a water stream close to the pipe wall and a water film that involves the oil core. It was verified the big reduction of pressure drop as compared to heavy oil flow alone in the pipe (around 59 times), with a viscosity water-heave oil ratio ( 7,408 10 5 A O μ μ = × − ) inside a 20,7 cm i.d. horizontal tube.