Experimental Investigation of Determining Optimum Pressure for Separation of Wellhead Fluids

The oil industry deals with wellhead fluids which are a mixture of hydrocarbon compounds, water and impurities. In two-phase separator design, the gas and liquid phases of a fluid stream are mechanically separated at a specific temperature and pressure. Proper separator design is important, because a separation vessel is normally the initial processing vessel in facility. Improper design can bottleneck and reduce the capacity of the entire facilities. The optimum pressure is defined as that pressure at which the maximum liquid volume is accumulated in the stock tank per volume of reservoir fluid produced.In this paper, by using the Flash Equilibrium Separator,gasometer and densimeter apparatuses, the optimum pressure for an Iranian oil sample was obtained and also gas-oil ratio, oil formation volume factor and residual oil gravity were indicated all as a function of separator pressure at the desired temperature

Keywords:

optimum pressure , API gravity , gas oil ratio , oil formation volume factor