Experimental and Computational Investigations on Severe Slugging in A Catenary Riser

Severe slugging can occur in a pipeline-riser system at relatively low liquid and gas flow rates during gas-oil transportation, possibly causing unexpected damage to the production facilities. Experiments with air and water are conducted in a horizontal and downward inclined pipeline followed by a catenary riser in order to investigate the mechanism and characteristics of severe slugging. A theoretical model is introduced to compare with the experiments. The results show that the formation mechanism of severe slugging in a catenary riser is different from that in a vertical riser due to the riser geometry and five flow patterns are obtained and analyzed. A gas-liquid mixture slug stage is observed at the beginning of one cycle of severe slugging, which is seldom noticed in previous studies. Based on both experiments and computations, the time period and variation of pressure amplitude of severe slugging are found closely related to the superficial gas velocity, implying that the gas velocity significantly influences the flow patterns in our experiments. Moreover, good agreements between the experimental data and the numerical results are shown in the stability curve and flow regime map, which can be a possible reference for design in an offshore oil-production system.

Effect of bubbles addition on teetered bed separation

To improve the separation efficiency of a conventional Teetered Bed Separator(TBS) in beneficiation of fine coal with a wide size range,an Aeration TBS(A-TBS) was proposed in this investigation.The bubbles were introduced to A-TBS by a self-priming micro-bubble generator.This study theoretically analyzed the effect of bubbles on the difference in hindered settling terminal velocity between different density particles,investigated the impact of superficial water velocity(V_(SW)) and superficial gas velocity(V_(Sg)) on bed fluidization,and compared the performance of the TBS and A-TBS in treating 1-0.25 mm size fraction particles.The results show that the expansion degree of fluidized bed which was formed by different size particles or has different initial height,is increased by the introduction of bubbles.Compared with the TBS,at the same level of clean coal ash content,the A-TBS shows an increase in the combustible recovery of clean coal,ash content of tailings,and practical separation density by 5.26%,6.56%,and 0.088 g/cm3 respectively,while it shows a decrease in the probable error(E_p) and V_(SW) by 0.031 and 3.51 mm/s,respectively.The addition of bubbles at a proper amount not only improves the separation performance of TBS,but also reduces the upward water velocity.