Análise do escoamento em golfadas em um distribuidor líquido-gás

Abstract

In the present work is realized the liquid-gas two-phase flow study in the slug pattern in a flow distributor used in undersea phase separation systems. This analysis is important as it consider flow patterns that are frequently found in offshore petroleum production. For the development of the present study, numerical simulations through the fluid dynamics computational software ANSYS® CFX® were made. The flow model is based on the eulerian-eulerian two fluids model, together with the Shear Stress Transport (SST) turbulence model. For the solution of the system of equations governing the flow, the ANSYS® CFX® software utilizes the Element-based Finite Volume Method. Existent experimental measurements at Núcleo de Escoamento Multifásico (NUEM) were utilized for the comparison and validation of the numerical results obtained from the numerical simulations. The present development aims to enhance the methodology to predict the slug flow in the existent distributor at NUEM. From the numerical results obtained, details of the flow in the distributor were evaluated, for instance the void fraction, streamlines, the film thickness at different heights of the cyclonic chamber, dimensionless parameters such as the Swirl, the Reynolds and the Froude numbers, in addition to the analysis of the liquid and gas mass flow efficiency, which have distributed equally at the four outlets, reaching the proposed goal.