Study of the Performance of a New Kind of Downhole Gas-Liquid Separation with High Gas Content

Abstract

In the downhole, gas separation is crucial for the Electrical Submergible Pumps' normal operation. This paper presents a new type of downhole gas-liquid separator (DGLS) and studies its separation performance in experiments that interests the oil industry. Laboratory results show that the pressure drop in the DGLS is rather small and that the gas-liquid separation in the DGLS can be seen as an incompressible flow. When the split ratio equals the gas content at the inlet, complete gas-liquid separation occurs. In addition, as the liquid density increases, the gas-liquid separation performance improves. The separation mechanism of the DGLS is related to the centrifugal acceleration, which is better when it is less than 30 times the gravitational acceleration. A method for predicting the separation performance is proposed.