Hydrocyclone Applications in Produced Water: A Steady-State Numerical Analysis

Abstract

Hydrocyclones are devices used to treat produced water in the petroleum industry. These gadgets are employed especially at offshore fields, due to restrictions of charge and space. Several factors may affect the performance of the oil/water separation by hydrocyclones. Among these factors are the geometry and processing capacity of the hydrocyclones, oil droplet size, density difference between the phases, pressure drops, and temperature fluctuation. This paper aims to analyze the effects of inlet fluid mixture temperature and oil droplet size on hydrocyclone performance in separating dispersed heavy oil from continuous streams of water. The experiment used a commercial package, ANSYS CFX 11. Numerical results clearly indicate that superficial velocity and oil mass flow rate in the overflow have a positive relationship with oil droplet size and temperature. The pressure drop decreased from 155.857 to 141.966kPa and the separation efficiency changed from 58.97 to 60.11% when the inlet temperature increased from 20 to 100°C using a 40m oil droplet diameter.

Improving Performance of Electrospun Nylon 6,6 Nanofiber Membrane for Produced Water Filtration via Solvent Vapor Treatment

“…Generally, there are several conventional separation methods that are applicable for produced water (PW) treatment. Some of the methods are coagulation/flocculation [1,2], adsorption [3,4], hydrocyclone [5,6], and floatation [3,7]. All of them have merits and shortcomings and are more favourable than others under certain circumstances.…”

Karakteristik Hydrocyclone untuk Pemisahan Minyak dan Air

“…Dalam penelitian Souza et al (2012), melakukan variasi suhu (20°C, 100°C) pada hydrocyclone, dengan menggunakan ukuran partikel minyak 40 µm dan kecepatan inlet 20 m/s. Semakin besar nya suhu inlet mengakibatkan penurunan viskositas fluida, sehingga gaya gesek antar partikel dengan dinding hydrocyclone juga menurun [10]. Adapun bentuk hydrocyclone dapat dilihat pada Gambar 1.…”

Nylon 6,6 Waste Nanofiber Membrane for Produced Water Filtration: Experimental, Performance Modelling, Optimization and Techno-Economic Analysis

“…Moreover, foaming occurrence dampens the oil and gas industry as it affects the oil and water separation, subsequently creating more PW waste [ 6 ]. Normally, conventional treatments such as coagulation/flocculation [ 7 , 8 , 9 ], adsorption [ 10 , 11 , 12 ], hydrocyclone [ 13 , 14 , 15 ] and floatation [ 16 ] are used either as standalone or in combination for PW treatment. However, they have few drawbacks such as low efficiency, corrosion, high cost operation, generating secondary pollutants and unable to completely remove microns or submicron sized oil droplets [ 17 , 18 ].…”