This report presents a brief overview of the activities accomplished during the first quarter of the budget period. The total tasks of the budget period are given initially, followed by the technical and scientific results achieved. A brief statement on the project work planned for the next quarter concludes the report. The objective of this five-year project is to expand the research activities of Tulsa University Separation Technology Projects (TUSTP) to multiphase oil/water/gas separation. This project will be executed in two phases. Phase I will focus on the investigations of the complex multiphase hydrodynamic flow behavior in a three-phase Gas-Liquid Cylindrical Cyclone (GLCC) Separator. The activities of this phase will include the development of a mechanistic model, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulator, and detailed experimentation on the three-phase GLCC. The experimental and CFD simulation results will be suitably integrated with the mechanistic model. In Phase II, the developed GLCC separator will be tested under high pressure and real crudes conditions. This is crucial for validating the GLCC design for field application and facilitating easy and rapid technology deployment. Design criteria for industrial applications will be developed based on these results and will be incorporated into the mechanistic model by TUSTP. 3 figs.

The objective of this five-year project is to expand the current research activities of Tulsa University Separation Technology Projects (TUSTP) to multiphase oil/water/gas separation. This project will be executed in two phases. Phase 1 will focus on the investigations of the complex multiphase hydrodynamic flow behavior in a three-phase Gas-Liquid Cylindrical Cyclone (GLCC) Separator. The activities of this phase will include the development of a mechanistic model, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulator, and detailed experimentation on the three-phase GLCC. The experimental and CFD simulation results will be suitably integrated with the mechanistic model. In Phase 2, the developed GLCC separator will be tested under high pressure and real crudes conditions. This is crucial for validating the GLCC design for field application and facilitating easy and rapid technology deployment. Design criteria for industrial applications will be developed based on these results and will be incorporated into the mechanistic model by TUSTP. This report presents a brief overview of the activities and tasks accomplished during the second quarter of the budget period. The total tasks of the budget period are given initially, followed by the technical and scientific results achieved. A brief statement on the project work planned for the next quarter concludes the report.

Despite the numerous advantages associated with using compact cylindrical cyclone gas/liquid separators, particularly for upstream production operations, the lack of a full understanding of the complex hydrodynamic process taking place in it and its "unfamiliarity" to oil field personnel has hindered its widespread use. The complexity associated with this technology is attributed to two limiting physical phenomena, liquid carry-over and gas carry-under. While a lot of work has been done to better understand and predict the liquid carry-over operational envelope, little or no information about methods capable of adequately predicting or characterizing the gas carry-under performance of such separators is available. Traditionally, to mitigate the gas carry-under phenomena, the use of complex control algorithms and systems has been employed. These systems make the technology expensive (as opposed to the potential cost reduction it promises) and impractical for realistic use in the oilfield where reliability is of critical importance. A simpler solution, the use of changeable or adjustable inlet-slots that regulate the artificial gravity environment created in the separator, could significantly improve the gas carry-under performance of cylindrical cyclone separators. This research has focused primarily on the use of adjustable inlet-slots. Theoretical analysis and experimental data investigating the benefits of variable inlet geometry have been provided. This work lays the foundation or validation required to perform more tests on a field-scale version to verify the results presented here. A modular design of such a variable inlet-slot inlet-section has the potential of simplifying the design and specifications of cylindrical cyclone gas/liquid separators. From the results of this investigation, it was found that the gas carry-under performance of a cylindrical cyclone gas/liquid separator could be improved considerably over a wider range of operating conditions by adjusting the size of the inlet-slots. This contradicts earlier reports of liquid carry-over improvement in separator performance. Also, for the first time, a simple method for theoretically analyzing the percent improvement in separator gas carry-under performance using the optimum g-force concept is presented. This method could be incorporated into design software for determining the slot-size configuration required for varying separator-operating conditions.