Análise numérica da dinâmica de uma bolha isolada de gás no rotor de uma bomba centrífuga

Abstract

Centrifugal pumps are widely used in the oil industry as the main component of the technique known as artificial lift by electric submersible pumping systems. The performance of those pumps as for their lifting capacity may however degrade due to the presence of reservoir gas. This performance degradation reduces a pump’s ability to increase the pressure levels, thus reducing a well’s production rate and therefore incurring economical losses. Yet, understanding the behaviour of the gas-liquid mixture inside a electric submersible pump is a rather complex task which is largely unexplored in the literature, as the scarcity of numerical methods aimed at modelling this behaviour attests. Therefore, the present work proposes a numerical study on the dynamics of a solitary bubble inside the rotor of the first stage of a radial electric centrifugal pump. A particle-tracking approach to accomplish that goal is used, by means of a commercial CFD package. This study aims at analysing the influence of the drag force, and the force due to the pressure gradient and the virtual mass force acting on a bubble flowing through the liquid in the rotating impeller channel. The results were compared to experimental data from the literature obtained for air-water flows through the same pump model. The numerical analysis showed the dominance of the drag and pressure forces on the trajectory of the solitary bubbles. Changes in radial speed, liquid flow rate, bubble diameter and position demonstrated the role those variables play on the bubble trajectory, favouring or disfavouring its exit from the rotor. Also, the numerical CFD model proved to be an useful tool to analysing the bubble movement, which is often difficult to obtain by means of experimental techniques. Finally, the gathered information are relevant to the understanding of the physics underlying the surging phenomenon associated with the degradation of the performance of centrifugal pumps.