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.

Influence of separator control on the characteristics of severe slugging flow

Due to the special structure of offshore multiphase pipes, it is easy for severe slugging to occur in the riser at low gas-liquid velocity. Violent pressure fluctuations and dramatic changes of flow rate are the main characteristics of severe slugging, leading to the risk of serious damage. In this paper, the separator control is adopted to accurately control the separator liquid level and pressure under severe slugging flow conditions. This indicates that the separator liquid level control alone does not have a significant impact on the upstream flow, but it is beneficial for normal operation and pressure control of the separator. As the separator pressure increases, the peak pressure in the riser apparently diminishes, and the amplitude of pressure fluctuation gradually decreases, which means that severe slugging is inhibited. During the slug blowing out, the gas/liquid slipping in the riser intensifies. The long gas plug quickly flows through the riser, and then tends to morph into short and slowly flowing gas bubbles. The elimination effect of the pressure control strategy on severe slugging is related to the relative rate of the superficial gas/liquid flow.

Experimental Investigation of Vibration Response of A Free-Hanging Flexible Riser Induced by Internal Gas-Liquid Slug Flow

The vibration response of a free-hanging flexible riser induced by internal gas-liquid slug flow was studied experimentally in a small-diameter tube model based on Froude number criterion. The flow regime in a curved riser model and the response displacements of the riser were simultaneously recorded by high speed cameras. The gas superficial velocity ranges from 0.1 m/s to 0.6 m/s while the liquid superficial velocity from 0.06 m/s to 0.3 m/s.Severe slugging type 3, unstable oscillation flow and relatively stable slug flow were observed in the considered flow rates. Severe slugging type 3 characterized by premature gas penetration occurs at relatively low flow rates. Both the cycle time and slug length become shorter as the gas flow rate increases. The pressure at the riser base undergoes a longer period and larger amplitude of fluctuation as compared with the other two flow regimes. Additionally, severe slugging leads to the most vigorous in-plane vibration. However, the responses in the vertical and horizontal directions are not synchronized. The vertical vibration is dominated by the second mode while the horizontal vibration is dominated by the first mode. Similar to the vortex-induced vibration, three branches are identified as initial branch, build-up branch and descending branch for the response versus the mixture velocity of gas-liquid flow.

Evaluation of frictional pressure drop correlations for air-water and air-oil two-phase flow in pipeline-riser system

Accurate prediction of the frictional pressure drop is important for the design and operation of subsea oil and gas transporting system considering the length of the pipeline. The applicability of the correlations to pipeline-riser flow needs evaluation since the flow condition in pipeline-riser is quite different from the original data where they were derived from. In the present study, a comprehensive evaluation of 24prevailing correlation in predicting frictional pressure drop is carried out based on experimentally measured data of air-water and air-oil two-phase flows in pipeline-riser. Experiments are performed in a system having different configuration of pipeline-riser with the inclination of the downcomer varied from-2°to-5°to investigated the effect of the elbow on the frictional pressure drop in the riser. The inlet gas velocity ranges from 0.03 to 6.2 m/s, and liquid velocity varies from 0.02 to 1.3 m/s. A total of885 experimental data points including 782 on air-water flows and 103 on air-oil flows are obtained and used to access the prediction ability of the correlations. Comparison of the predicted results with the measured data indicate that a majority of the investigated correlations under-predict the pressure drop on severe slugging. The result of this study highlights the requirement of new method considering the effect of pipe layout on the frictional pressure drop.