(7)Evaluation of flow characteristics in an onshore horizontal separator using computational fluid dynamics
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Tathagata Acharya∗ , Lucio Casimiro
Department of Physics and Engineering, California State University, Bakersfield, 9001 Stockdale Highway, Bakersfield, CA 93311, United States
Received 8 August 2019; received in revised form 25 November 2019; accepted 26 November 2019
Available online 10 January 2020
Abstract
In the petrochemical industry, separation of oil from water is a very important process. Wells produce mixtures of gas, oil, and water
which undergo a primary stage of separation inside horizontal gravity separators. The performance of these vessels is evaluated by measuring
mean residence time (MRT) and residence time distribution (RTD). Although many researchers studied flow characteristics in horizontal
separators, limited number of articles exist that discuss separator MRT and RTD with varying water-cuts. In this article, the authors study an
experiment using a horizontal gravity separator by previous researchers and perform computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations on the
same geometry under similar conditions. The simulation results show qualitative agreement with the experiments by previous researchers.
As shown by experiments before, CFD results showed that MRT of the organic phase increased with increase in water-cut. In addition, the
RTD characteristics show very similar trends between CFD and experimental results.
© 2020 Shanghai Jiaotong University. Published by Elsevier B.V.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Keywords: Multiphase separators; Computational fluid dynamics; Mean residence time; Residence time distribution.