Análise numérica do comportamento da bolha de Taylor em bifurcações T e Y.

Abstract

Two-phase floe gas-oil exhibit different flow patterns for example slug flow. This flow to be present in many applications in the petroleum industry such as: fluid elevation in the wells and pipe flow. The purpose of this work is to study numerically the fluid flow of Taylor’s bubbles in a pipe with 3 mm of diameter linked to T and Y junctions utilizing a commercial code CFX 10®. We use the Eulerian-Eulerian model to treat the two-phase flow of disperse phase (gas) and continuum phase (heavy oil) considering the model two-dimensional, transient, isothermic, and laminar flow regime. Results of the velocity, pressure and volume fraction of the phases to different cases are presented and the effect of oil velocity (0.025; 0.05; 0.1 and 0.15 m/s), oil viscosity (0.5; 1.5; 2.5 and 5.0 Pa.s) and junction inclination (30; 60 and 90°)in the shape and formation frequency of the Taylor bubble in the pipe are analyzed. We verify that the shape, length and dispersion of bubbles are affected by gas-oil relative velocity in the inlet of the pipe and oil viscosity.