Study of an ESP's performance handling liquid-liquid flow and unstable O-W emulsions Part I: Experimental

Numerical Study of the Performance Loss of A Centrifugal Pump Carrying Emulsion

“…8 shows a more pronounced drop at higher flowrates. This observation is in accordance with the experimental results of Valdes [12], where a 4% performance degradation was noted before BEP, increasing up to 14% at this point. In this study, the degradation rate is 9% before BEP and increases up to 17% after this point.…”

“…The emulsion considered in this study is a concentrated oil-in-water emulsion, composed of 40% oil volume fraction and 60% WC. Its rheological behavior was experimentally measured under a shear rate ranging from 1 s −1 to 3000 s −1 (data from reference [12]) that covers the range of the average shear rate of the studied pump. It was found that the studied emulsion has a low effective viscosity range with a clear tendency to shear thinning, fitting the Cross model.…”

“…Fig. 5 shows the emulsion viscosity predicted by the rheological model presented in the literature using Zhu [8] and Banjar [7] coefficients as a function of water cut at BEP (900 rpm and Q = 300 m 3 /h), compared to the experimental data from [12]. A clear peak in the emulsion viscosity is observed as the water-volume fraction increases, indicating the reversal of the continuous-oil emulsion (water-in-oil) to a continuous-water emulsion (oil-in-water), resulting in a significant increase in its effective viscosity.…”

“…Comparison of the emulsion effective viscosity predicted by the rheological model using Zhu [8] and Banjar [7] coefficients with the experimental data of [12] and the adjusted rheological model exponent E (Eq. 2) (compared to the other models) to account for the difference in operating conditions (lower specific speed and larger pump size compared to the reference papers).…”

“…density and Cross fitting parameters of the studied emulsion from[12] ρ[kg/m 3 ] n [-] k [s n ] µ 0 [Pa.s] µ ∞ [Pa.s]…”