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High viscous oil–water two–phase flow: experiments & numerical simulations

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Abstract

An experimental study on highly viscous oil-water two-phase flow conducted in a 5.5 m long and 25.4 mm internal diameter (ID) pipeline is presented. Mineral oil with viscosity ranging from 3.5 Pa.s – 5.0 Pa.s and water were used as test fluid for this study. Experiments were conducted for superficial velocities of oil and water ranging from 0.06 to 0.55 m/s and 0.01 m/s to 1.0 m/s respectively. Axial pressure measurements were made from which the pressure gradients were calculated. Flow pattern determination was aided by high definition video recordings. Numerical simulation of experimental flow conditions is performed using a commercially available Computational Fluid Dynamics code. Results show that at high oil superficial velocities, Core Annular Flow (CAF) is the dominant flow pattern while Oil Plug in Water Flow (OPF) and Dispersed Oil in Water (DOW) flow patterns are dominant high water superficial velocities. Pressure Gradient results showed a general trend of reduction to a minimum as water superficial velocity increases before subsequently increasing on further increasing the superficial water velocity. The CFD results performed well in predicting the flow configurations observed in the experiments.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to BP Exploration Operating Company Ltd., Sunbury, UK for originally funding the test facility for a research project. We also acknowledge the immense assistance from laboratory and research staff in the Oil and Gas Engineering Centre at Cranfield University in this work especially the tireless efforts of Mr. Stan Collins. Y. Baba, AM Aliyu and O. Alagbe are grateful to the Petroleum Technology Development Fund, Nigeria for funding their PhD research work at Cranfield University. J. Shi equally appreciates the sponsorship the Chinese Government provided for her PhD research work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Oil and Gas Engineering Centre, Cranfield University, Cranfield, UK

    Archibong Archibong-Eso, Jing Shi, Yahaya D. Baba & Hoi Yeung

  2. Energy and Fluids Engineering Group, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Cross River University of Technology, Calabar, Nigeria

    Archibong Archibong-Eso

  3. Department of Chemical/Petroleum Engineering, Afe Babalola University, PMB 5454, Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria

    Yahaya D. Baba

  4. Faculty of Engineering, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK

    Aliyu M. Aliyu

  5. Chemical Engineering Programme, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, PMB 0248, Bauchi, Nigeria

    Yusuf O. Raji

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  1. Archibong Archibong-Eso
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  2. Jing Shi
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  3. Yahaya D. Baba
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  4. Aliyu M. Aliyu
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  5. Yusuf O. Raji
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  6. Hoi Yeung
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Correspondence to Yahaya D. Baba.

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Archibong-Eso, A., Shi, J., Baba, Y.D. et al. High viscous oil–water two–phase flow: experiments & numerical simulations. Heat Mass Transfer 55, 755–767 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00231-018-2461-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00231-018-2461-9

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