STUDIES ON PROPERTIES OF FLOW CAVITATION NUMBER AND MINIMUM PRESSURE COEFFICIENT IN SHORT CLOSED CONDUITS

For a short closed conduit with smooth (streamline pattern) boundary, the comparison of minimum pressure coefficient at boundary, - Cpm , which obtained from model tests, with flow cavitation number a is possible to describe the property of preventing cavitation in the closed conduit.In this paper, analytical results show that the ratio σ/ - Cpm decreases with increasing Reynolds number Re, when the configuration of the conduit is designed, and this ratio approaches a constant when Re = 106 or so. The model test data for five engineering cases of the short closed conduit with various configuration indicates that the analytical results are reliable. Therefore, the value of the ratio σ/ - Cpm corresponding to that of Reynolds number in model (Re)m ≥106 must be taken so as to correctly describe the cavitation property of the studied conduit. The condition of Lr ≥ 10-4[(Re)p]2/3 should be satisfied ( Lr is model length scale; (Re)p is Reynolds number in prototype) when the model is designed by Froude criterion of similarity.

The Minimum Stable Pressure and Geological Significants of Supersilic Garnet in Continental Felsic Rocks: Constraints from HT-HP Experiments

A lot of previous experimental studies on ultramafic rocks(SiO2 unsaturated system)(Ringwood and Major, 1971;Irifune et al., 1986;Gasparik, 1989;Ono and Yasuda, 1996) have demonstrated that characteristics of Si-rich and Al-deficient in garnet are resulted from coupled substitution of SiⅥ+MⅥ=AlⅥ+AlⅥ and SiⅥ+NaⅧ=AlⅥ+MⅧ(M=Mg, Fe, Ca) at ultrahigh pressures(UHP)(>5 GPa). The degree of substitution will be enhanced by increasing pressure which has a positive correlation with the content of SiⅥ, but a negative correlation with the content of AlⅥ in supersilic garnet. These experimental results established a theoretical foundation for further understanding the formation mechanism of the exsolution of pyroxene in garnet observed in deep mantle xenoliths and some ultrahigh pressure rocks, and also for estimating the pressure conditions of the formation of supersilic garnet before exsolution(Haggerty and Sautter, 1990;Sautter et al., 1991;van Roermund et al., 1998;Ye et al., 2000). Although some experimental studies on SiO2 saturated system have been reported(Irifune et al., 1994;Ono., 1998;Dobrazhinetskya and Green.,2007;Wu et al., 2009), the stability conditions of supersilic garnet are still lack of unified understanding. Therefore, HP-HT experiments were carried out on felsic rocks under conditions of 6–12 GPa and 1000℃–1400℃. Combined with previous experimental data, we try to figure out the minimum stable pressure and geological significants of supersilic garnet in SiO2 saturated system. Our experimental results from SiO2 saturated system show the minimum stable pressure of supersilic garnet should be ≥10 GP of stishovite stability field. These results are similar as that from experiments using starting composition similar to average upper continental crust reported by Irifune et al(1994) who yielded that garnet gradually became supersilic and Al-deficient as pressures increased above 10 GPa, especially in a pressure interval between 13 and 18 GPa. Moreover, experiments with different starting materials(Ono, 1998;Dobrazhinetskya and Green, 2007;Wu et al. 2009) also indicate the stable pressure condition of supersilic garnet is mainly ≥9 –10 GPa in SiO2 saturated system if data of small-size grains at low temperature are ignored due to measuring errors. Thus, it can be concluded that the minimum stable pressure of supersilic garnet in SiO2 saturated system is distinctly different from that in SiO2 unsaturated ultramafic rock system. The minimum pressure of the former is ≥9–10 GPa of stishovite stability field, while that of the latter is >5 GPa. Therefore, whether independent SiO2 phase exist or rock system is SiO2 saturated must be taken into considered when estimating the peak pressure of exsolutions in supersilic garnet in UHP rocks. Furthermore, pressure of >5 GPa directly estimated by supersilic garnet based on conclusion from SiO2 unsaturation system rather than SiO2 saturation in previous sdudies may have been underestimated and need to be re-estimated. Supersilic garnets have been recognized by interior exsolutions of clinopyroxene in garnet pyroxene from Yinggelisayi South Altyn(Liu et al., 2005), and exsolutions of rodlike quartz+rutile in felsic gneiss from Songshugou North Qinling(Liu et al., 2003). According to the experimental results from SiO2 unsaturated system, the peak metamorphic pressure of the both SiO2 saturated rocks have been estimated to be >7 Gpa and >5 Gpa, respectively. However, combined with the new experimental results above, we re-estimated that the peak metamorphic pressure of these SiO2 saturated rocks should be≥9–10 GPa at least, implying an ultra-deep subduction to mantle depth of stishovite stability field. This research, together with previous findings(Liu et al., 2007, 2018), shows that continental subduction to mantle depth(300 km) of stishovite stability field and then exhumation to the surface is obviously more common than previously thought, and the rock types are also diverse. At the same time, it provides a new indicator and thought for recognizing the subduction to the mantle depth of stishovite stability field in UHP metamorphic belt.

Minimum wall pressure coefficient of orifice plate energy dissipater

Orifice plate energy dissipaters have been successfully used in large-scale hydropower projects due to their simple structure, convenient construction procedure, and high energy dissipation ratio. The minimum wall pressure coefficient of an orifice plate can indirectly reflect its cavitation characteristics： the lower the minimum wall pressure coefficient is, the better the ability of the orifice plate to resist cavitation damage is. Thus, it is important to study the minimum wall pressure coefficient of the orifice plate. In this study, this coefficient and related parameters, such as the contraction ratio, defined as the ratio of the orifice plate diameter to the flood-discharging tunnel diameter; the relative thickness, defined as the ratio of the orifice plate thickness to the tunnel diameter; and the Reynolds number of the flow through the orifice plate, were theoretically analyzed, and their relationships were obtained through physical model experiments. It can be concluded that the minimum wall pressure coefficient is mainly dominated by the contraction ratio and relative thickness. The lower the contraction ratio and relative thickness are, the larger the minimum wall pressure coefficient is. The effects of the Reynolds number on the minimum wall pressure coefficient can be neglected when it is larger than 10^5. An emoirical expression was presented to calculate the minimum wall oressure coefficient in this study.

An improved correlation to determine minimum miscibility pressure of CO2–oil system

An accurate and reliable estimation of minimum miscibility pressure(MMP) of CO2-oil system is a critical task for the design and implementation of CO2 miscible displacement process.In this study,an improved CO2-oil MMP correlation was developed to predict the MMP values for both pure and impure CO2 injection cases based on ten influential factors,i.e.reservoir temperature(TR),molecular weight of C7+oil components(MWC7+),mole fraction of volatile oil components(xvol),mole fraction of C2-C4 oil components(xC2-C4),mole fraction of C5-C6 oil components(xCs-5-C6),and the gas stream mole fractions of CO2(yCO2),H2S(yH2S),C1(yC1),hydrocarbons(yHC)and N2(yN2).The accuracy of the improved correlation was evaluated against experimental data reported in literature concurrently with those estimated by several renowned correlations.It was found that the improved correlation provided higher prediction accuracy and consistency with literature experimental data than other literature correlations.In addition,the predictive capability of the improved correlation was further validated by predicting an experimentally measured CO2-Oil MMP data,and it showed an accurate result with the absolute deviation of 4.15%.Besides,the differential analysis of the improved correlation was analyzed to estimate the impact of parameters uncertainty in the original MMP data on the calculated results.Also,sensitivity analysis was performed to analyze the influence of each parameter on MMP qualitatively and quantitatively.The results revealed that the increase of xC2-C4,xC5-C6 and yH2 S lead to the decrease of MMP,while the increase of TR,MWC7+,xvol,yCO2,YC1,yHC and yN2 tend to increase the MMP.Overall,the relevance of each parameter with MMP follows the order of TR> xC5-C6> MWC7+> xvol> yH2 S> yHC> yCO2>yC1>yN2>xC2-C4.

Estimation of Minimum Miscibility Pressure for Flue Gas Injection Using Soft Experimentations

A new approach is demonstrated in which soft experimentation can be performed for MMP measurements, thus replacing the common practice of slim tube displacement laboratory experiments. Recovery potential from oil reservoirs by miscible flue gas injection was studied by slim tube and field-scale numerical simulation using two flue gases and seven crude oils sampled at different depths in three candidate reservoirs. The soft experimentations were conducted using Eclipse300TM, a three-phase compositional simulator. This study investigates minimum miscibility pressure (MMP), a significant miscible gas injection project screening tool. Successful design of the project is contingent to the accurate determination of the MMP. This study evaluates effects of important factors such as injection pressure, oil component composition, and injection gas composition on the MMP and recovery efficiency for slim tube and field-scale displacements. Two applicable MMP correlations were used for comparison and validation purposes.

Miscibility of light oil and flue gas under thermal action

The miscibility of flue gas and different types of light oils is investigated through slender-tube miscible displacement experiment at high temperature and high pressure.Under the conditions of high temperature and high pressure,the miscible displacement of flue gas and light oil is possible.At the same temperature,there is a linear relationship between oil displacement efficiency and pressure.At the same pressure,the oil displacement efficiency increases gently and then rapidly to more than 90% to achieve miscible displacement with the increase of temperature.The rapid increase of oil displacement efficiency is closely related to the process that the light components of oil transit in phase state due to distillation with the rise of temperature.Moreover,at the same pressure,the lighter the oil,the lower the minimum miscibility temperature between flue gas and oil,which allows easier miscibility and ultimately better performance of thermal miscible flooding by air injection.The miscibility between flue gas and light oil at high temperature and high pressure is more typically characterized by phase transition at high temperature in supercritical state,and it is different from the contact extraction miscibility of CO_(2) under conventional high pressure conditions.

Estimation of the minimum miscibility pressure for CO_(2)ecrude-oil systems by molecular dynamics simulation

CO_(2)injection is an effective enhanced oil recovery technique for energy security with the benefits of carbon neutrality.To reach the maximum oil recovery,the miscible condition between CO_(2)and oil needs to be maintained in the reservoir,which requires the operation pressure to be higher than the minimum miscibility pressure(MMP).There are two types of MMPs:the first-contact MMP(FC-MMP)and the multi-contact MMP(MC-MMP).In this study,molecular dynamics simulations were performed for the CO_(2)eoil interface system using two simplified digital oil models:a Bakken dead oil with four lumping components and a live-crude-oil model with 50 types of oil molecules but with no asphaltenes and heavy oil fractions.The vanishing interfacial tension method was used to predict the MMP.Different CO_(2)eoil volume ratios were considered to mimic the different degrees of vaporization.To estimate the MMP accurately and rapidly,the interfacial tension in the low-pressure regime was used for the prediction.Consequently,different MMPs were obtained,where the MMP value increased with increasing CO_(2)eoil volume ratio.FC-MMP can be predicted when the CO_(2)eoil volume ratio is sufficiently high.When the CO_(2)eoil volume ratio was approximately 9e10,MMP was closest to the actual MC-MMP value.The condensing and vaporizing mechanism was also studied at the molecular scale.Because pure CO_(2)was used,only the vaporizing effect on MMP occurred.It was found that the intermediate C2eC6 components have the main effect on the MMP calculation.This study can help to establish a computational protocol to estimate FC-MMP and MC-MMP,which are widely used in reservoir engineering.

A review of chemical-assisted minimum miscibility pressure reduction in CO_(2) injection for enhanced oil recovery

Miscible CO_(2)injection appears to be an important enhanced oil recovery technique for improving sweep efficiency and eliminating CO_(2)-oil interfacial tension resulting in up to 10%higher oil recovery compared to immiscible flooding,in addition to the environmental benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions through carbon capturing utilising and storage(CCUS).Moreover,this technique could be similarly applicable to natural gas and nitrogen projects to increase oil recovery and to reduce the associated gas flaring.However,miscible displacement may not be achievable for all reservoirs,in particular,reservoirs with high temperature where high injection pressure would be needed to reach miscibility which likely exceeds the formation fracture pressure.Therefore,to further achieve reservoirs’potential,there is a pressing need to explore a viable means to decrease the miscibility pressure,and thus expand the application envelop of miscible gas injection in reservoirs with high temperatures.In this work,we aim to provide insights into minimum miscibility pressure(MMP)reduction by adding chemicals into CO_(2)phase during injection.We achieved this objective by performing a comprehensive review on chemical-assisted MMP reduction using different chemical additives(e.g.,alcohols,fatty acids,surfactants)and different experimental methodologies.Previous experimental studies have shown that a fraction of chemical additives can yield up to 22%of MMP reduction in CO_(2)-oil system.Based on results analysis,surfactant based chemicals were found to be more efficient compared to alcohol based chemicals in reducing the interfacial tension in the CO_(2)-oil system.Based on the current experimental results,adding chemicals to improve the miscibility and reduce the MMP in the CO_(2)-oil system appears to be a promising technique to increase oil recovery while reducing operating cost.Selection of the effective chemical additives may help to expand the application of miscible gas injection to shallow and high temperature reservoirs.Furthermore,our review provides an overall framework to screen potential chemical additives and an injection strategy to be used for miscible displacement in CO_(2)and/or gas systems.

A Scheme for Estimating Tropical Cyclone Intensity Using AMSU-A Data

Brightness temperature anomalies measured by the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit （AMSU） on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration （NOAA） polar-orbiting series are suited to estimate tropical cyclone （TC） intensity by virtue of their ability to assess changes in tropospheric warm core struc-ture in the presence of clouds. Analysis of the measurements from different satellites shows that the variable horizontal resolution of the instrument has significant effects on the observed brightness temperature anoma-lies. With the aim to decrease these effects on TC intensity estimation more easily and effectively, a new simple correction algorithm, which is related to the product of the brightness temperature gradient near the TC center and the size of the field-of-view （FOV） observing the TC center, is proposed to modify the observed anomalies. Without other measurements, the comparison shows that the performance of the new algorithm is better than that of the traditional, physically-based algorithm. Furthermore, based on the correction algorithm, a new scheme, in which the brightness temperature anomalies at 31.4 GHz and 89 GHz accounting for precipitation effects are directly used as the predictors with those at 54.94 GHz and 55.5 GHz, is developed to estimate TC intensity in the western North Pacific basin. The collocated AMSU-A observations from NOAA-16 with the best track （BT） intensity data from the Japan Meteorological Agency （JMA） in 2002-2003 and in 2004 are used respectively to develop and validate regression coefficients. For the independent validation dataset, the scheme yields 8.4 hPa of the root mean square error and 6.6 hPa of the mean absolute error. For the 81 collocated cases in the western North Pacific basin and for the 24 collocated cases in the Atlantic basin, compared to the BT data, the standard deviations of the estimation differences of the results are 15% and 11% less than those of the CIMSS （Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison） TC intensity AMSU estimation products.

Sealing Performance and Optimization of a Subsea Pipeline Mechanical Connector

Researchers seldom study the optimum design of a mechanical connector for subsea oil-gas pipeline based upon the sealing performance. An optimal design method of a novel subsea pipeline mechanical connector is presented. By analyzing the static metal sealing mechanism, the critical condition of the sealing performance is established for this connector and the formulation method of the contact pressure on the sealing surface is created. By the method the minimum mean contact pressure of the 8.625 inch connector is calculated as 361 MPa, which is the constraint condition in the optimum design of connector.The finite element model is created in ANSYS Parametric Design Language(APDL) and the structure is optimized by the zero-order method, with variance of contact pressure as the objective function, and mean contact pressures and plastic strains as constraint variables. The optimization shows that variances of contact pressure on two sealing surfaces decrease by 72.41% and 89.33%, respectively, and mean contact pressures increase by 31.18% and 52.84%, respectively. The comparison of the optimal connectors and non-optimal connectors in the water pressure experiments and bending experiments shows that the sealing ability of optimized connectors is much higher than the rated pressure of 4.5 MPa, and the optimal connectors don’t leak under the bending moment of 52.2 kN·m.This research provides the formulation to solve contact pressure on the sealing surface and a structure optimization method to design the connectors with various dimensions.

Experimental and simulation determination of minimum miscibility pressure for a Bakken tight oil and different injection gases

The effective development of unconventional tight oil formations,such as Bakken,could include CO_(2) enhanced oil recovery(EOR)technologies with associated benefits of capturing and storing large quantities of CO_(2).It is important to conduct the gas injection at miscible condition so as to reach maximum recovery efficiency.Therefore,determination of the minimum miscibility pressure(MMP)of reservoir live oileinjection gas system is critical in a miscible gas flooding project design.In this work,five candidate injection gases,namely CO_(2),CO_(2)-enriched flue gas,natural gas,nitrogen,and CO_(2)-enriched natural gas,were selected and their MMPs with a Bakken live oil were determined experimentally and numerically.At first,phase behaviour tests were conducted for the reconstituted Bakken live oil and the gases.CO_(2) outperformed other gases in terms of viscosity reduction and oil swelling.Rising bubble apparatus(RBA)determined live oileCO2 MMP as 11.9 MPa and all other gases higher than 30 MPa.The measured phase behaviour data were used to build and tune an equation-of-state(EOS)model,which calculated the MMPs for different live oilgas systems.The EOS-based calculations indicated that CO_(2) had the lowest MMP with live oil among the five gases in the study.At last,the commonly-accepted Alston et al.equation was used to calculate live oilepure CO_(2) MMP and effect of impurities in the gas phase on MMP change.The Bakken oile CO_(2) had a calculated MMP of 10.3 MPa from the Alston equation,and sensitivity analysis showed that slight addition of volatile impurities,particularly N_(2),can increase MMP significantly.

Development of minimum tie line length method for determination of minimum miscible pressure in gas injection process

Gas injection process is a very important technology in enhanced oil recovery.Minimum miscible pressure is one of the key parameters in gas injection processes.Various experimental methods such as slim tube are used to measure MMP.These methods are costly and time consuming.Recently computational methods are used in order to achieve a cost-effective and reliable technique to evaluate MMP.In this work,a new methodology has been proposed for determination of MMP using the minimum tie line length method.A real mixing cell model was developed to estimate the MMP,MME and key tie lines.This method is simple,robust,and faster than conventional one-dimensional simulation of slim tube.The new mixing cells method can accurately determine the whole key tie lines to a shift,regardless of the number of injection gas and reservoir fluid components.Unlike other methods of mixing cells,this method automatically corrects dispersion by additional contacts to achieve the low variation domain of tie line slope.Also,the determination and implementation of the minimum miscibility enrichment are investigated.

Experimental and numerical study of installing a dune model in a 90° bend in the horizontal-vertical pneumatic conveying system

In the pneumatic conveying process,particles move to the bend under the influence of inertia to form a particle rope,which will cause serious wear between the particles and the pipe wall,and then the dune model is designed and installed in the 90° bend to reduce energy consumption and wear in this study.Firstly,the minimum pressure drop velocity of particles transported by different size dune models was obtained through experimental study.Then the energy saving mechanism of the dune model is studied by CFD-DEM coupling.The experimental results show that the installation of the dune model reduces the minimum pressure drop velocity.The numerical simulation results show that the number of collisions between the particles and the tube wall in the vertical tube decreases after the installation of the dune model,which reduces the energy loss.Moreover,the increasing of tail size of the dune model is beneficial to the diffusion and acceleration of the particles in the vertical tube.

Application of hybrid support vector regression artificial bee colony for prediction of MMP in CO2-EOR process

Minimum miscibility pressure(MMP)is a key parameter in the successful design of miscible gases injection such as CO2 flooding for enhanced oil recovery process(EOR).MMP is generally determined through experimental tests such as slim tube and rising bubble apparatus(RBA).As these tests are time-consuming and their cost is very expensive,several correlations have been developed.However,and although the simplicity of these correlations,they suffer from inaccuracies and bad generalization due to the limitation of their ranges of application.This paper aims to establish a global model to predict MMP in both pure and impure CO2-crude oil in EOR process by combining support vector regression(SVR)with artificial bee colony(ABC).ABC is used to find best SVR hyper-parameters.201 data collected from authenticated published literature and covering a wide range of variables are considered to develop SVR-ABC pure/impure CO2-crude oil MMP model with following inputs:reservoir temperature(TR),critical temperature of the injection gas(Tc),molecular weight of pentane plus fraction of crude oil(MWC5+)and the ratio of volatile components to intermediate components in crude oil(xvol/xint).Statistical indicators and graphical error analyses show that SVR-ABC MMP model yields excellent results with a low mean absolute percentage error(3.24%)and root mean square error(0.79)and a high coefficient of determination(0.9868).Furthermore,the results reveal that SVR-ABC outperforms either ordinary SVR with trial and error approach or all existing methods considered in this work in the prediction of pure and impure CO2-crude oil MMP.Finally,the Leverage approach(Williams plot)is done to investigate the realm of prediction capability of the new model and to detect any probable erroneous data points.

Experimental and simulation studies for optimization of waterealternating-gas(CO2)flooding for enhanced oil recovery

The paper deals with the screening of injection of water-alternating-gas(WAG)to tap the residual oil saturation left in the reservoir by over and above the water flooding.The detailed mineralogical composition has been studied by X-ray diffraction(XRD)method along with the petrophysical parameters to see their impacts of flow on Himmatnagar(India)sandstone.Saturates,aromatics,resins,and asphaltenes present in the crude oil were determined by ASTM procedure.Minimum miscibility pressure of CO2 with the crude oil was determined and it has been found at 1254 psi based on thermodynamic software.Different WAG ratios of 1:1,1.5:1 and 2:1 have been applied for EOR during studies.Simulation on water injection followed by CO2 has been performed for investigation of the WAG process efficiency.A total 2 cycles of WAG injection was done with water flow rate of 1 ml/min and gas injection pressure around 1250 psi to achieve the better contact miscibility.The experimental data has been generated,compiled and interpreted during different cycles of WAG process.It was observed that WAG ratio 2:1 exhibits highest additional oil recovery around 34%of original oil in place.Increasing WAG ratio yields more additional oil recovery.