Investigation of Swirl Flows Applied to the Oil and Gas Industry

Abstract

The work presented in this paper is part of a larger research project which is aimed at finding solutions to problems associated with liquid loading, erosion at pipe bends caused by sand particles, and phase separation. The work uses computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to design solutions that can reduce or eliminate the aforementioned problems. Here, the results from CFD simulations of two-phase air and water flows are critically analyzed through comparison with the results from experiments carried out by Falcone et al. (2003) using the ANUMET* concept. The entire experimental setup is modeled within the CFD simulation and flow rates for water and air are taken from the data used for the experiments. Important variables such as pressure drop and fluid film thickness, which were monitored closely during the experiments, are obtained from the CFD simulations and compared with the experimental results. The results presented in this paper provide insights into the physics of two-phase swirl flows, identifying areas of research that still need to be addressed.