Three-phase flow modeling of oil, water and sand particles inoil transportation pipelines

Sand deposition in oil transport pipelines can cause erosion of pipes and subsequently adverse effects on oil production. Presence of water cut along with the extracted oil rises the necessity of considering a multiphase flow problem. CFD can help one to understand and control behavior of such multiphase flow transport. Eulerian multiphase model was used to simulate hydrodynamics of oil, water and sand particles transport. Simulations were conducted using Ansys Fluent 15.0 software package. The aim of the present work was to investigate effects of variations of inlet velocity on the behavior of sand deposition in a 9.12 meter pipe length. It was concluded that providing an inlet velocity higher than 1.5m/s can decrease the deposition significantly

Keywords:

multiphase flow , Oil transportation , CFD , Sand particles