A Study of Oil-Water Flow Patterns in Horizontal Pipes

1997 ◽  
Vol 12 (03) ◽  
pp. 165-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.L. Trallero ◽  
C. Sarica ◽  
J.P. Brill
Author(s):  
Hai-Yuan Yao ◽  
Jing Gong

In this paper, an experimental research on the oil-water liquid-liquid two-phase flow patterns and their transitions in horizontal pipes are carried out. According to online oil-water flow structures and the analysis of pressure drop signals., different flow patterns are defined and distinguished. A new classification for oil-water flow patterns is proposed. The flow pattern maps are obtained from the experimental data, and the factors affecting the transition mechanism of different flow regimes are discussed. In addition, some semi-theoretical criteria for the transition between different flow patterns are proposed. Especially, an accurate model is developed to predict the critical conditions for phase inversion. Comparisons of the proposed criteria with other experimental data show reasonable agreements.


Author(s):  
Hermes Vazzoler Junior ◽  
Daiane Mieko Iceri ◽  
Juliana Cenzi ◽  
Carlos Keiichi Tanikawa da Silva ◽  
Charlie van der Geest ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Hooman Foroughi ◽  
Masahiro Kawaji

The flow characteristics of a highly viscous oil and water mixture in a circular microchannel have been investigated. Water and silicone oil with a viscosity of 863 mPa.s were injected into a fused silica microchannel with a diameter of 250 μm. Before each experiment, the microchannel was initially saturated with either oil or water. In the initially oil-saturated case, different liquid-liquid flow patterns were observed and classified over a wide range of oil and water flow rates. As a special case, the flow of water at zero oil flow rate in a microchannel initially filled with silicone oil was also studied. When the microchannel was initially saturated with water, the oil formed a jet in water at the injection point but developed an instability at the oil-water interface downstream and eventually broke up into droplets.


2020 ◽  
Vol 59 (47) ◽  
pp. 20892-20902
Author(s):  
Haili Hu ◽  
Jiaqiang Jing ◽  
Sara Vahaji ◽  
Jiatong Tan ◽  
Jiyuan Tu

SPE Journal ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (01) ◽  
pp. 339-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.. Abubakar ◽  
Y.. Al-Wahaibi ◽  
T.. Al-Wahaibi ◽  
A.. Al-Hashmi ◽  
A.. Al-Ajmi ◽  
...  

Summary Experimental investigations of flow patterns and pressure gradients of oil/water flow with and without drag-reducing polymer (DRP) were carried out in horizontal and upward-inclined acrylic pipe of 30.6-mm inner diameter (ID). The oil/water flow conditions of 0.1- to 1.6-m/s mixture velocities and 0.05–0.9 input oil-volume fractions were used, and 2,000 ppm master solution of the water-soluble DRP was prepared and injected at controlled flow rates to provide 40 ppm of the DRP in the water phase at the test section. The flow patterns at the water-continuous flows were affected by the DRP, whereas there were no tangible effects of the DRP at the oil-continuous flow regions. The upward inclinations shifted the boundaries between stratified flows and dual continuous flows, and the boundaries between dual continuous flows and water-continuous flows to lower mixture velocities. This means that the inclinations increased the rate of dispersions. The frictional pressure gradients for both with and without DRP slightly decreased with inclinations especially at low mixture velocities, whereas the significant increases in the total pressure gradients with the inclinations were more pronounced at low mixture velocities. The inclinations did not have a major effect on the drag reductions by the DRP at the high mixture velocities and low-input oil-volume fractions where the highest drag reductions recorded were 64% at 0° inclination and 62% at both + 5° and +10° inclinations. However, the inclinations increased the drag reductions as the input oil-volume fractions were increased before phase-inversion points.


2016 ◽  
Vol 115 ◽  
pp. 135-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hassan Pouraria ◽  
Jung Kwan Seo ◽  
Jeom Kee Paik

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
MD Ferdous Wahid ◽  
Reza Tafreshi ◽  
Zurwa Khan ◽  
Albertus Retnanto

Abstract Fluid pressure gradient in a wellbore plays a significant role to efficiently transport between source and separator facilities. The mixture of two immiscible fluids manifests in various flow patterns such as stratified, dispersed, intermittent, and annular flow, which can significantly influence the fluid’s pressure gradient. However, previous studies have only used limited flow patterns when developing their data-driven model. The aim of this study is to develop a uniform data-driven model using machine-learning (ML) algorithms that can accurately predict the pressure gradient for the oil-water flow with two stratified and seven dispersed flow patterns in a horizontal wellbore. Two different machine-learning algorithms, Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Random Forest (RF), were employed to predict the pressure gradients. A total of 662 experimental points from nine different flow patterns were extracted from five sources that include twelve variables for different physical properties of oil-water, wellbore’s surface roughness, and input diameter. The variables are entrance length to diameter ratio, oil and water viscosity, density, velocity, and surface tension, between oil and water surface tension, surface roughness, input diameter, and flow pattern. The algorithms’ performance was evaluated using median absolute percentage error (MdAPE) and root mean squared error (RMSE). A repeated train-test split strategy was used where the final MdAPE and RMSE were computed from the average of all repetitions. The MdAPE and RMSE for the prediction of pressure gradients are 13.89% and 0.138 kPa/m using RF and 12.17% and 0.088 kPa/m using ANN, respectively. The ML algorithms’ ability to model the pressure gradient is demonstrated using measured vs. predicted analysis where the experimental data points are mostly located in close proximity of the diagonal line, indicating a suitable generalization of the models. Comparing the performance between RF and ANN shows that the latter algorithm’s prediction accuracy is significantly better (p<0.01).


Author(s):  
S. Alireza Hojati ◽  
Pedram Hanafizadeh

The flow patterns in two phase and multi-phase flows is a significant factor which influences many other parameters such as drag force, drag coefficient and pressure drop in pipe lines. One of the major streams in the gas and oil industries is oil-water two phase flow. The main flow patterns in oil-water flows are bubbly, slug, dual continuous, stratified and annular. In the present work flow patterns in two phase oil-water flow were investigated in a 0.5in diameter pipe with length of 2m. 3D simulation was used for this pipe and six types of mesh grid were used to investigate mesh independency of the simulation. The proposed numerical analyses were performed by a CFD package which is based both on volume of fluid (VOF) and Eulerian-Eulerian methods. The results showed that some flow patterns can be simulated better with VOF method and some other maybe in Eulerian-Eulerian method, so these two methods were compared with together for all flow patterns. The flow patterns may be a function of many parameters in flow. One of the important parameter which may affect flow patterns in pipe line is pipe inclination angle; therefore flow patterns in the different pipe inclination angles were investigated in two phase oil-water flow. The range of inclinations has been varied between −45 to +45 degree about the horizon. In the presented simulation oil is mixed with water via a circular hole at center of the pipe, the ratio of oil surface to water surface at entrance is 2/3 so water phase was considered as the main phase. Flow patterns were investigated for every angle of pipe and numerical results were compared with available experimental data for verification. Also the flow patterns simulated by numerical approaches were compared with available flow regime maps in the previous literatures. Finally, effect of pipe inclination angle and flow patterns on the pressure loss were investigated comprehensively.


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