Title: Study of the separation characteristics of gas-liquid-solid multiphase flow in the impeller of a helical axial flow oil-gas pump

Authors: Haozhi Nan; Rennian Li; Weiwei Zhou

Addresses: College of Energy and Power Engineering, Lanzhou University of Technology, Lanzhou, Gansu Province 730050, China; Key Laboratory of Fluid Machinery and Systems, Lanzhou, No. 287, Langongping Street, Gansu Province 730050, China ' College of Energy and Power Engineering, Lanzhou University of Technology, Lanzhou, Gansu Province 730050, China; Key Laboratory of Fluid Machinery and Systems, Lanzhou, No. 287, Langongping Street, Gansu Province 730050, China ' CNOOC China Limited, Tianjin Branch, Tianjin 300450, China

Abstract: During oil and gas transportation, due to transport mixed media, phase separation is easy to occur, which reduces the efficiency of the multiphase pump and may cause 'gas blockage' in serious cases. In this paper, the self-designed single stage helical axial flow compression unit was used as the research object to explore the separation characteristics of the fluid medium in the impeller of the pump. Based on computational fluid dynamic (CFD), the Euler multiphase fluid model and the SST k-ω turbulence model were used to calculate the flow in impeller. By setting monitoring points in the flow channel, the force movement of bubbles and solid particles is analysed. The results show that the radial velocities of bubbles and solid particles suddenly change in the middle of the channel. By analysing the pressure on the impeller surface, the coincidence area and non-coincidence area are defined. The results show that in the overlapping area when λ > 0.5, GVF is basically consistent with the inlet and the maximum GVF is 0.8. In the non-overlapping area, when λ > 0.5, the maximum GVF is 1, indicating complete gas-liquid separation.

Keywords: helical axial flow oil-gas multiphase pump; multiphase flow; separation characteristics; computational fluid dynamic; CFD.

DOI: 10.1504/PCFD.2024.137021

Progress in Computational Fluid Dynamics, An International Journal, 2024 Vol.24 No.2, pp.78 - 91

Received: 10 Jan 2022
Received in revised form: 07 Jul 2022
Accepted: 04 Aug 2022
Published online: 01 Mar 2024 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article