A Downhole Hydrocyclone for the Recovery of Natural Gas Hydrates and Desanding: The CFD Simulation of the Flow Field and Separation Performance

Shunzuo Qiu, Guorong Wang, Leizhen Wang and Xing Fang
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Shunzuo Qiu: Department of Mechatronic Engineering, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu 610500, China
Guorong Wang: Department of Mechatronic Engineering, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu 610500, China
Leizhen Wang: Department of Mechatronic Engineering, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu 610500, China
Xing Fang: Department of Mechatronic Engineering, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu 610500, China

Energies, 2019, vol. 12, issue 17, 1-18

Abstract: The application of a hydrocyclone to recycle NGH and desand during NGH exploitation is a novel idea. The flow field and performance of this hydrocyclone is in the frontier of the research in this field and is unclear so far. This research aimed to reveal the flow field characteristics and performance of NGH downhole hydrocyclones. In this paper, flow field, solid phase particle volume distribution and separation efficiency were investigated according to the two objectives of NGH recovery efficiency and sand removal efficiency with different inlet velocities by computational fluid simulations (CFD)-FLUENT software. The results show that the short circuit flow contributed to the recovery of NGH. Axial velocity is a decisive factor in balancing the two objectives of NGH recovery efficiency and sand removal efficiency. In addition, the same as those in traditional hydrocyclones, the static pressure, tangential velocity and turbulence intensity play key roles in separation performance, hydrocyclone performance can be improved by increasing the inlet velocity. On the other hand, most separation efficiencies were greater than 80%, when the particle size was larger than 15 µm, and the differential pressure was less than 0.6 MPa. Therefore, all the above results confirm that hydrocyclone has good performance in NGH exploitation, and the basis of its structural design and optimization are provided.

Keywords: natural gas hydrate; hydrocyclone; desand; flow field characteristics; separation performance; CFD-FLUENT (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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