Flow Measurements in Oil and Gas Separators
The direction of flow in and around a separator along with other flow instruments are usually illustrated on the Piping and instrumentation diagram, (P&ID). Some of these flow instruments include the Flow Indicator (FI), Flow Transmitter (FT) and the Flow Controller (FC). Flow is of paramount importance in the oil and gas industry because flow, as a major process variable is essentially important in that its understanding helps engineers come up with better designs and enables them to confidently carry out additional research. Mohan et al (1999) carried out a research into the design and development of separators for a three-phase flow system. The purpose of the study was to investigate the complex multiphase hydrodynamic flow behaviour in a three-phase oil and gas separator. A mechanistic model was developed alongside a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulator. These were then used to carry out a detailed experimentation on the three-phase separator. The experimental and CFD simulation results were suitably integrated with the mechanistic model. The simulation time for the experiment was 20 seconds with the oil specific gravity as 0.885, and the separator lower part length and diameter were 4-ft and 3-inches respectively. The first set of experiment became a basis through which detailed investigations were used to carry out and to conduct similar simulation studies for different flow velocities and other operating conditions as well.
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