Multiphase Flow Splitting in Parallel/Looped Pipelines

Alvarez, Lourdes Patricia; Mohan, Ram S.; Shoham, Ovadia; Ávila, Carlos

doi:10.2118/135723-ms

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 7 publications

(5 reference statements)

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“…El-Shaboury et al [8] studied the shunt of stable two-phase flow (stratified flow, wavy flow and annular flow) at an impact T-tube. Alvarez et al [9] conducted slug flow experiments. These two studies showed that by keeping the downstream equipment operating under the same conditions, the GLTPF always exhibited a uniform distribution, independent of the flow pattern at the inlet.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Experimental Analysis of Gas-Liquid Flow Breakdown in a T-Junction

Ma,

Han,

et al. 2024

FDMP

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When a gas-liquid two-phase flow (GLTPF) enters a parallel separator through a T-junction, it generally splits unevenly. This phenomenon can seriously affect the operation efficiency and safety of the equipment located downstream. In order to investigate these aspects and, more specifically, the so-called bias phenomenon (all gas and liquid flowing to one pipe, while the other pipe is a liquid column that fluctuates up and down), laboratory experiments were carried out by using a T-junction connected to two parallel vertical pipes. Moreover, a GLTPF prediction model based on the principle of minimum potential energy was introduced. The research results indicate that this model can accurately predict the GLTPF state in parallel risers. The boundary of the slug flow and the churn flow in the opposite pipe can be predicted. Overall, according to the results, the pressure drop curves of the two-phase flow in the parallel risers are basically the same when there is no bias phenomenon, but the pressure drop in the parallel riser displays a large deviation when there is a slug flow-churn flow. Only when the parallel riser is in a state of asymmetric flow and one of the risers produces churn flow, the two-phase flow is prone to produce the bias phenomenon.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Experimental Analysis of Gas-Liquid Flow Breakdown in a T-Junction

Ma,

Han,

et al. 2024

FDMP

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“…Up to now, scholars have carried out a lot of research work on the gas-liquid two-phase flow split at the T-junction. El-Shaboury et al [5] investigated the flow patterns of stratified, wavy and annular flow splitting at the impacting tee and Alvarez et al [6] conducted experiment with slug flow. Mi et al [7] studied the shunt characteristics of slug flow from a single pipe into a parallel separator.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Numerical Simulation and Experimental Analysis of the Influence of Asymmetric Pressure Conditions on the Splitting of a Gas-Liquid Two-Phase Flow at a T-Junction

Ma¹,

He²,

Luo³

et al. 2021

Fluid Dynamics &Amp; Materials Processing

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Dedicated experiments and numerical simulations have been conducted to investigate the splitting characteristics of a gas-liquid two phase flow at a T junction. The experiments were carried out for different gas-liquid velocities. The flow rates in the two branches were measured accurately to determine how the two considered phases distribute in the two outlets. The experimental results have shown that when the two outlet pressures are asymmetric, the two-phase flow always tends to flow into the outlet which has a lower pressure. As the inlet liquid velocity increases, however, the two-phase flow gradually tends to split evenly. Compared with the experiment results, the pressure difference between the two outlets can be determined more accurately by means of numerical simulation. The trends of experimental results and simulations are in very good agreement.

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“…Due to operational reasons, the production of a wellpad has to be routed to one and only one tank battery. This assumption follows from: (1) contract conditions with the land owners, (2) flow measuring and integrity requirements, and (3) difficulties when splitting a three-phase flow with unsteady pressure conditions (Azzopardi and Smith 1992;Alvarez et al 2010;Worthen and Henkes 2015). The difficulty of the problem increases with the number of wellpads, and in practice, the straightforward solution is to increase the number of tank batteries (TB), even though they become underutilized in a few months when the wells production declines.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pipeline network design for gathering unconventional oil and gas production using mathematical optimization

et al. 2021

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The optimal design of gathering networks for the unconventional oil and gas production is a relevant problem, particularly with the shale boom. In this work, we address a network design problem in which the main decisions are the location and sizing of tank batteries for oil and gas separation together with the pipeline connections. The goal is to gather the oil, gas and water production from a large number of wellpads, being also possible to install junction nodes to merge the production at some points of the field. One major challenge is due to the steep production decline curves, requiring continued connections of new wells. To address this problem, we develop a complex multiperiod formulation accounting for the varying flows over the planning horizon. We propose an optimization framework to obtain efficient solutions within reasonable computational times. To circumvent the computational burden of a large-scale, nonlinear and non-convex model due to the fluid dynamics of multiphase flows, we propose a solution algorithm based on a bi-level decomposition. Near optimal solutions are found for real-world instances, suggesting that facility planning can considerably improve the economics of unconventional projects.

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Multiphase Flow Splitting in Parallel/Looped Pipelines

Cited by 5 publications

References 7 publications

An Experimental Analysis of Gas-Liquid Flow Breakdown in a T-Junction

An Experimental Analysis of Gas-Liquid Flow Breakdown in a T-Junction

Numerical Simulation and Experimental Analysis of the Influence of Asymmetric Pressure Conditions on the Splitting of a Gas-Liquid Two-Phase Flow at a T-Junction

Pipeline network design for gathering unconventional oil and gas production using mathematical optimization

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