Modeling and Analysis of Airlift System Operating in Three-Phase Flow

Based on the momentum theorem, the fluid governing equation in a lifting pipe is proposed by use of the method combining theoretical analysis with empirical correlations related to the previous research, and the performance of an airlift pump can be clearly characterized by the triangular relationship among the volumetric flux of air, water and solid particles, which are obtained respectively by using numerical calculation. The meso-scale river sand is used as tested particles to examine the theoretical model. Results of the model are compared with the data in three-phase flow obtained prior to the development of the present model, by an independent experimental team that used the physical conditions of the present approach. The analytical error can be controlled within 12% for predicting the volumetric flux of water and is smaller than that （±16%） of transporting solid particles in three-phase flow. The experimental results and computations are in good agreement for air-water two-phase flow within a margin of ±8%. Reasonable agreement justifies the use of the present model for engineering design purposes.

Three-phase flow of submarine gas hydrate pipe transport

In the hydraulic transporting process of cutter-suction mining natural gas hydrate, when the temperature-pressure equilibrium of gas hydrate is broken, gas hydrates dissociate into gas. As a result, solid-liquid two-phase flow(hydrate and water) transforms into gas-solid-liquid three-phase flow(methane, hydrate and water) inside the pipeline. The Euler model and CFD-PBM model were used to simulate gas-solid-liquid three-phase flow. Numerical simulation results show that the gas and solid phase gradually accumulate to the center of the pipe. Flow velocity decreases from center to boundary of the pipe along the radial direction. Comparison of numerical simulation results of two models reveals that the flow state simulated by CFD-PBM model is more uniform than that simulated by Euler model, and the main behavior of the bubble is small bubbles coalescence to large one. Comparison of numerical simulation and experimental investigation shows that the values of flow velocity and gas fraction in CFD-PBM model agree with experimental data better than those in Euler model. The proposed PBM model provides a more accurate and effective way to estimate three-phase flow state of transporting gas hydrate within the submarine pipeline.

Flux vector splitting solutions for coupling hydraulic transient of gas-liquid-solid three-phase flow in pipelines

The gas-liquid-solid three-phase mixed flow is the most general in multiphase mixed transportation. It is significant to exactly solve the coupling hydraulic transient problems of this type of multiphase mixed flow in pipelines. Presently, the method of characteristics is widely used to solve classical hydraulic transient problems. However, when it is used to solve coupling hydraulic transient problems, excessive interpolation errors may be introduced into the results due to unavoidable multiwave interpolated calculations. To deal with the problem, a finite difference scheme based on the Steger- Warming flux vector splitting is proposed. A flux vector splitting scheme is established for the coupling hydraulic transient model of gas-liquid-solid three-phase mixed flow in the pipelines. The flux subvectors are then discretized by the Lax-Wendroff central difference scheme and the Warming-Beam upwind difference scheme with second-order precision in both time and space. Under the Rankine-Hugoniot conditions and the corresponding boundary conditions, an effective solution to those points located at the boundaries is developed, which can avoid the problem beyond the calculation region directly induced by the second-order discrete technique. Numerical and experimental verifications indicate that the proposed scheme has several desirable advantages including high calculation precision, excellent shock wave capture capability without false numerical oscillation, low sensitivity to the Courant number, and good stability.

Attractor comparison analysis for characterizing vertical upward oil gas water three-phase flow

We investigate the dynamic characteristics of oil-gas-water three-phase flow in terms of chaotic attractor comparison. In particular, we extract a statistic to characterize the dynamical difference in attractor probability distribution. We first take time series from Logistic chaotic system with different parameters as examples to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method. Then we use this method to investigate the experimental signals from oil-gas-water three-phase flow. The results indicate that the extracted statistic is very sensitive to the change of flow parameters and can gain a quantitatively insight into the dynamic characteristics of different flow patterns.

Modeling and simulation of non-isothermal three-phase flow for accurate prediction in underbalanced drilling

The present study aims at investigating the effect of temperature variation due to heat transfer between the formation and drilling fluids considering influx from the reservoir in the underbalanced drilling condition. Gas-liquid-solid three-phase flow model considering transient thermal interaction with the formation was applied to simulate wellbore fluid to calculate the wellbore temperature and pressure and analyze the influence of different parameters on fluid pressure and temperature distribution in annulus. The results show that the non-isothermal three-phase flow model with thermal consideration gives more accurate prediction of bottom-hole pressure(BHP) compared to other models considering geothermal temperature. Viscous dissipation, the heat produced by friction between the rotating drilling-string and well wall and drill bit drilling, and influx of oil and gas from reservoir have significant impact on the distribution of fluid temperature in the wellbore, which in turn affects the BHP. Bottom-hole fluid temperature decreases with increasing liquid flow rate, circulation time, and specific heat of liquid and gas but it increases with increasing in gas flow rate. It was found that BHP is strongly depended on the gas and liquid flow rates but it has weak dependence on the circulation time and specific heat of liquid and gas. BHP increase with increasing liquid flow rate and decreases with increasing gas flow rate.

Analysis of the flow pattern and periodicity of gas–liquid–liquid three-phase flow in a countercurrent mixer-settler

In contrast to the concurrent mixer-settler,the interaction between the mixing and settling chambers have to be taken into account in the simulation of the countercurrent mixer-settler,and no work has been reported for this equipment.In this work,a three-phase flow model based on the Eulerian multiphase model,coupled with a sliding mesh model is proposed for a countercurrent mixer-settler.Based on this,the dispersed phase distribution,flow pattern,and pressure distribution are investigated,which can help to fill the gap in the operation mechanism.In addition,the velocity vector distribution at the phase port shows an intriguing phenomenon that two types of vectors with opposite directions are distributed on the left and right sides of the same plane,which indicates that the material exchange in the mixing and settling chambers is simultaneous.Analysis of this variation at this location by a fast Fourier transform(FFT)method reveals that it is mainly influenced by the mixing chamber and is consistent with the main period of the outlet flow fluctuations.Therefore,by monitoring the fluctuation of the outlet flow and then analyzing it by the FFT method,the state of the whole tank can be determined,which makes it promising for the design of control systems for countercurrent mixer-settlers.

Classification of Oil-Gas-Water Three-Phase Flow in a Pipeline Based on BP Neural Network Analysis

The flow pattern in a pipeline is a very important topic in petroleum exploitation. This paper is to classify the flow pattern of oil-gas-water flow in a pipeline by using BP neural network. The effects of different parameter combinations are investigated to find the most important ones. It is shown that BP neural network can be used in the analysis of the flow pattern of three-phase flow in pipelines. In most cases, the mean square error is large for the horizontal pipes. The optimized neuron number of the middle layer changes with conditions. So, we must changes the neuron number of the middle layer in simulation for any conditions to seek the best results. These conclusions can be taken as references for further study of the flow pattern of oil-gas-water in a pipeline.

EXPERIMENTAL AND NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF THREE-PHASE FLOW IN AN AERATION TANK

Aeration plays an important role in the treatment of activated sludge due tothe interactions among bubbles, sewage and activated sludge in an aeration tank. The aerationperformance is directly concerned with the efficiency of sewage disposal. So the three-dimensionaltwo-fluid model was established with emphasis on the phase interaction terms in this paper. Thismodel, as an extension of the two-phase flow model, involved the motion laws of three-phases, andwas compared with experimental studies. The finite volume method was used in the numericalsimulation of gas-liquid two-phase flow and gas-liquid-solid three-phase flow. In order to discussthe influence of gas-phase, liquid-phase and solid-phase motions in an aeration tank on the sewagedisposal, three kinds of boundary and initial conditions were adopted. The simulated results of theflow structure show qualitatively good agreement with the experimental data. And the theoreticalbasis for designing the best aeration tank was discussed according to the simulated results.

Testing for Nonlinearity in Dynamic Characteristics of Vertical Upward Oil-Gas-Water Three-phase Bubble and Slug Flows

Based on the conductance fluctuation signals measured from vertical upward oil-gas-water three-phase flow experiment, time frequency representation and surrogate data method were used to investigate dynamical characteristics of oil-in-water type bubble and slug flows. The results indicate that oil-in-water type bubble flow will turn to deterministic motion with the increase of oil phase fraction f o and superficial gas velocity U sg under fixed flowrate of oil-water mixture Q mix . The dynamics of oil-in-water type slug flow becomes more complex with the increase of U sg under fixed flowrate of oil-water mixture. The change of f o leads to irregular influence on the dynamics of slug flow. These interesting findings suggest that the surrogate data method can be a faithful tool for characterizing dynamic characteristics of oil-in-water type bubble and slug flows.

On large scale CFD-DEM simulation for gas-liquid-solid,three-phase flows

Particulate flows in a mixture of gas and liquid,i.e.gas-liquid-solid three-phase flows,are frequently encountered both in nature and industry.In such flows,complex interactions between multiple phases,i.e.particle-particle interactions,fluid-particle interactions and interfacial interactions(such as surface tension and particle wetting),play a crucial role.In literature,simulations of three-phase flows are sometimes performed by incorporating interface capturing methods(e.g.VOF method)into the CFD-DEM coupling model.However,it is practically impossible to perform large(industrial)scale simulation because of the high computational cost.One of the strategies often employed to reduce the computational cost in CFD-DEM is to upscale particle size,which is applied mainly to particle single-phase and fluid-solid two-phase flows.The present work is focused on the scaled-up particle model for gas-liquid-solid three-phase flows.The interaction forces between multiple phases are scaled using the general criteria derived from the continuum assumption of particulate flow.A colour function based interface-capturing method with improved interface smoothness is developed,and the diffusion based coarse graining is employed to ensure sufficient space resolution in CFD even when particle size is increased.It is shown that the model developed is capable of predicting the both particles and fluid behaviour in the original system.

Modeling of Three-Phase Flow and Interface Deformation of Metal/Bath in Aluminum Reduction Cell With Cathode Protrusion

Stabilizing the interface wave of the molten aluminum(metal)-electrolyte(bath)is beneficial to shorten the anode-cathode distance(ACD)which is critical to the energy saving.A coupled mathematical model was developed to study the impact of the novel cathode protrusion on the molten fluid motion as well as the metal-bath interface deformation.The molten fluid motion in the aluminum reduction ceils is under the combined effect of the electro-magnetic forces(EMFs)and the gas bubbles generated at the anode.A transient inhomogeneous three-phase model(metal-bath-gas bubble)was established in order to calculate more accurate.The results indicate that the metal-bath interface deformation can be reduced significantly by the novel cathode protrusion which is beneficial to the electric energy saving.Besides,The EMFs decreases as a result of the optimizing of the magnetic field due to the novel cathode convex which is an important driving force for the deformation of the interface.In addition,large vortex in the metal flow field is break up into the small vortex by the cathode protrusion and then dissipated due to the viscous force and the hindering effect of the cathode protrusion.The quantity of the vortex as well as the strength of the vortex reduces significantly in the reduction cell with novel cathode protrusion.

Combination of a gamma radiation-based system and the adaptive network-based fuzzy inference system(ANFIS)for calculating the volume fraction in stratified regime of a three-phase flow

Background Understanding the volume fraction of water-oil-gas three-phase flow is of significant importance in oil and gas industry.Purpose The current research attempts to indicate the ability of adaptive network-based fuzzy inference system(ANFIS)to forecast the volume fractions in a water-oil-gas three-phase flow system.Method The current investigation devotes to measure the volume fractions in the stratified three-phase flow,on the basis of a dual-energy metering system consisting of the 152Eu and 137Cs and one NaI detector using ANFIS.The summation of volume fractions is equal to 100%and is also a constant,and this is enough for the ANFIS just to forecast two volume fractions.In the paper,three ANFIS models are employed.The first network is applied to forecast the oil and water volume fractions.The next to forecast the water and gas volume fractions,and the last to forecast the gas and oil volume fractions.For the next step,ANFIS networks are trained based on numerical simulation data from MCNP-X code.Results The accuracy of the nets is evaluated through the calculation of average testing error.The average errors are then compared.The model in which predictions has the most consistency with the numerical simulation results is selected as the most accurate predictor model.Based on the results,the best ANFIS net forecasts the water and gas volume fractions with the mean error of less than 0.8%.Conclusion The proposed methodology indicates that ANFIS can precisely forecast the volume fractions in a water-oil-gas three-phase flow system.

Operator Splitting for Three-Phase Flow in Heterogeneous Porous Media

We describe an operator splitting technique based on physics rather than on dimension for the numerical solution of a nonlinear system of partial differential equations which models three-phase flow through heterogeneous porous media.The model for three-phase flow considered in this work takes into account capillary forces,general relations for the relative permeability functions and variable porosity and permeability fields.In our numerical procedure a high resolution,nonoscillatory,second order,conservative central difference scheme is used for the approximation of the nonlinear system of hyperbolic conservation laws modeling the convective transport of the fluid phases.This scheme is combined with locally conservative mixed finite elements for the numerical solution of the parabolic and elliptic problems associated with the diffusive transport of fluid phases and the pressure-velocity problem.This numerical procedure has been used to investigate the existence and stability of nonclassical shock waves(called transitional or undercompressive shock waves)in two-dimensional heterogeneous flows,thereby extending previous results for one-dimensional flow problems.Numerical experiments indicate that the operator splitting technique discussed here leads to computational efficiency and accurate numerical results.

Current optimization-based control of dual three-phase PMSM for low-frequency temperature swing reduction

In this paper,a control scheme based on current optimization is proposed for dual three-phase permanent-magnet synchronous motor(DTP-PMSM)drive to reduce the low-frequency temperature swing.The reduction of temperature swing can be equivalent to reducing maximum instantaneous phase copper loss in this paper.First,a two-level optimization aiming at minimizing maximum instantaneous phase copper loss at each electrical angle is proposed.Then,the optimization is transformed to a singlelevel optimization by introducing the auxiliary variable for easy solving.Considering that singleobjective optimization trades a great total copper loss for a small reduction of maximum phase copper loss,the optimization considering both instantaneous total copper loss and maximum phase copper loss is proposed,which has the same performance of temperature swing reduction but with lower total loss.In this way,the proposed control scheme can reduce maximum junction temperature by 11%.Both simulation and experimental results are presented to prove the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed control scheme for low-frequency temperature swing reduction.

Local Gas Phase Flow Characteristics of a Gas-Liquid-Solid Three-Phase Reversed Flow Jet Loop Reactor

The local gas-phase flow characteristics such as local gas holdup(εg), local bubble velocity (V_b) and local bubble mean diameter(d_b) at a specified point in a gas-liquid-solid three-phase reversedflow jet loop reactor was experimentally investigated by a five-pointconductivity probe. The effects of gas jet flow rate, liquid jet flowrate, solid loading, nozzle diameter and axial position on the localεg, V_b and d_b profiles were discussed. The presence of solids atlow solid concentrations not only increased the local εg and V_b,but also decreased the local d_b. The optimum solid loading for themaximum local εg and V_b together with the minimum local d_b was0.16×10^-3 m^3, corresponding to a solid volume fraction ε_S＝2.5/100.

The Measurement of Oil,Gas and Water Flowrates in Three-Phase Slug Flow

Three-sphase flow invo1ving oil-water two immiscible liquids and gas which is often foundin the fields of petroleum production has been studied in this paper.A new method with thecombination of a horizontal tube,a downward flow vertica1 tube and an orifice to measure theflowrates is presented.In this method the frictional pressure drop in the downward vertical tube isreplaced by that in the horizontal tube,the void fraction is derived from the gravitational pressuredrop,then the volume fraction of the individual phase can also be obtained.The individual flowratescan be calculated when the water fraction is known.This method is applicable for many kinds ofoil-wells to measure the flowrates of crude oil,natural gas and water.Compared with other methods,the presented method involves fewer measuring parameters.The experimental results proved quitegood accuracy of the method,with measurement deviation within 10%,and reliable results wereobtained under high Dressure conditions.

Three-Phase Optimal Power Flow for Study of PV Plant Distributed Impact on Distribution Systems

This paper presents a TOPF （three-phase optimal power flow） model that represents photovoltaic systems. The PV plant is modeled in the TOPF as active and reactive power source. Reactive power can be generated or absorbed using the available capacity and the adjustable power factor of the inverter. The reduction of unbalance voltage and losses in the distribution systems is obtained by actions of reactive power control of the inverter. The TOPF is formulated by current balance equations and the PV systems are modeled via an equivalent circuit. The primal-dual interior point method is used to obtain the optimal operating points for the systems for different scenarios of solar irradiance and temperature, thus providing a detailed view of the impact of photovoltaic distributed generation.

Analysis of Maximum PowerPoint Tracking (MPPT) Adaptability in Inverters of the Three-Phase Photovoltaic Systems Integrated into the Electrical Grid of Congo-Brazzaville

This paper investigates the adaptability of Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) algorithms in single-stage three-phase photovoltaic (PV) systems connected to the grid of Congo-Brazzaville and compares the attributes of various conventional, significance and novelty of controller system of the proposed of method and improved Incremental Conductance algorithms, Perturbation and Observation Techniques, and other Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) algorithms in normal and partial shading conditions. Performance evaluation techniques are discussed on the basis of the dynamic parameters of the PV system although the control of this structure is relatively advanced technology but the conversion efficiency is difficult to improve due to increase in transformation series. The single stage topology has a simple topology with high reliability and efficiency because of high power consumption, but control algorithm is more complex because of its power convert main circuit a new strategy is being developed. This paper describes a method for maximum power point tracking (MPPT) in the single-stage and three single-phase PV grid-connected system. In the paper, the nonlinear output characteristics of the PV including I-V & P-V are obtained in changed solar insulations or temperature based on MATLAB, and the MPPT algorithm which is based on the P & O algorithm method, compared with Incremental Conductance, is also described, a dimensioning of the impedance adapter for better stabilization. A comparison SPWM and SVPWM control methods in the case of a grid connection applied to the electrical grid of Republic of Congo and their influences on the dynamic performance of the system and their impact in reducing the harmonic rate for better injection into the grid. The simulation model of three single-phase PV grid-connected system is built, and simulation results show the MPPT algorithm has excellent dynamic and static performances, which verifies the Incremental Conductance is effective for MPPT in the single-stage and three single-phase PV grid-connected system.

Flow characteristics of three-phase foam in mine gob and its application

To study the flow characteristics of three-phase foam in gob area,different perfusion experiments in coal mine gob were designed and put forward in the paper.Through the observation of flow range,flow characteristics of three phase foam were analyzed with different flow rates.And,unsteady seepage process of three-phase foam was simulated with CFD software.Base on experiment and numerical simulation results,flow characteristics of three-phase foam and its major influence factors are discussed,and the optimal arrangement distribution of mine fire control drills is also determined.Research results show that the flow range and stacking height of three-phase foam in gob are significantly influenced by gravity.The vertical stacking height and horizontal diffusion distance of three-phase foam are also directly related to the flow volume of foam perfusion,the larger flow single hole perfusion volume,the higher stacking height and the longer diffusion distance could be obtained.

Analysis of rock physics response of gas-bearing volcanic reservoir based on three-phase poroelastic theory

Unlike previous theories with velocity and/or elastic modulus averaging, we use a three-phase porous rock physics model developed by Santos for analyzing the seismic response of two immiscible fluids in saturated porous media. Considering reservoir reference pressure and coupling drag of two fluids in pores, the effects of frequency, porosity, and gas saturation on the phase velocities of the P-and S-waves are discussed in detail under field conditions. The effects of porosity and gas saturation on Vp/Vs are also provided. The data for our numerical experiments are from a sample of deep volcanic rock from Daqing. The numerical results show that the frequency dispersion effect can be ignored for deep volcanic rocks with low porosity and low permeability. It is concluded that for deep volcanic rocks the effect of gas content in pores on Vp/Vs is negligible but the effect of porosity is significant when there is a certain amount of water contained in the pores. The accurate estimate of lithology and porosity in this case is relatively more important.