Estudo experimental do escoamento anular oleo-agua ("core flow") na elevação de oleos ultraviscosos

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

1999

RESUMO

The increase in importance of heavy oil in the energy scenario makes it viable the exploitation of initially unprofitable reservoirs. This leads to the search of technologies capable to improve the development of heavy oil fields. In view of this scenario the present work proposes a new technology for heavy oil lift by using the core annular flow pattem (shortly "core flow"). This flow arrangement can be induced through the lateral injection of relatively small quantities of water, in order to get a lubricated oil core in the pipe. With this objective in mind, an experimental apparatus was built and tested at a laboratory scale (1 in. vertical pipe) with an 17.6 Pa.s oil and water at room temperatures. The experiments were quite successfuL The core - flow allowed to reduce the friction pressure drop by more than 1000 times with respect to single phase oil flow and is of the same order as the flow of water alone at same total flow rate. The total pressure drop was reduced 93 times with respect to single phase oil flow. Finally, a physically based correlation for friction pressure drop in upward core flow was developed and validated with our measurements. Comparison of this correlation with data from another source gave excellent results. Besides the fluid properties and flow rates, the correlation requires the volumetric fraction ofthe oil, which is determined from another correlation

ASSUNTO(S)

escoamento bifasico petroleo - transporte hidrodinamica

ACESSO AO ARTIGO

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