To overcome the high water content in numerous oil fields, axial inlet hydrocyclone is considered an alternative device of oil-water separation technique that is used downfield. This type of hydrocyclone has a rare previous work compared to other vortex tube separators. Additionally, the accurate mechanism of the enhanced separation process by optimizing the separation technologies remains unclear. Therefore, an extensive study was conducted to expand the application range of the axial inlet hydrocyclone. This workpresents a literature review of the different separation technologies for the axial inlethydrocyclone. These are categorized into two groups: (i) geometrical parameters including, internal swirl element (ISE), swirl chamber, and (ii) operational parameters including, inlet flow rate, feed temperature, mixture fraction, and droplet size. The influence of these parameters on the velocity components profile and pressure drop were analyzed based on the separation performance parameters such as separation efficiency and pressure drop. This work could serve as an engineering tool that results in the enhanced economic workability of separation by hydrocyclone.
The fluid mixture hydrocyclone is an excellent tool for downhole oil/water separation (DOWS) for high water cut. In the present work the flow through inline axial inlet hydrocyclone is investigated computationally using ANSYS-FLUENT-19 software. The three dimensional continuity and momentum equations with SST k-omega turbulence model are used to simulate the strongly swirling, turbulent flow. Oil/water two phase mixture treated as the working fluid, water is considered as the primary phase and oil is the secondary phase. The considered oil volume fraction this work is 0.25 and flow split is 0.3 for three different flow rates of (14, 28, 56) m3/hr corresponding to Reynold's number range of (1.6 to 6.6)*104. The pressure and velocity fields were analyzed in the whole hydrocyclone with core recirculation. The results are helpful to predict the flow motion inside the cyclone to estimate the oil/water separation process. The present work indicates that the water purity at cyclone exit was 90%, while the obtained oil purity was 38%.
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