MODELING OF AQUEOUS GAS AND OIL EMULSION SEPARATION IN A VORTEX FLOW. PART 1

Poor-quality separation of the aqueous gas and oil emulsion leads to large losses of hydrocarbons in the form of increased content of petroleum products in the supply water and droplet liquid in the separated associated petroleum gas. In addition, the residual amount of non-separated gas in oil is released during the storage and transportation of commercial oil, resulting in failure of pumping equipment, forming gas plugs during pipe pumping, and polluting the environment during storage in a tank farm not equipped with a system for capturing light fractions with «breathing» of tanks into the environment during filling and drainage operations. In this work, it is proposed to increase the quality of separation of the aqueous gas and oil emulsion by using a vortex separator, which is a design of a static blade axial vortical apparatus (AVA) inside the pipe. The proposed design will allow pre-separating the gas and liquid phases by imparting angular velocity to the flow of extracted products and increasing centrifugal acceleration, which in turn will increase the rate of gas bubbles from oil and its concentration in the axial flow region, and the rejection of water globules to the wall area with subsequent coalescence into the free phase. Based on the simulation, the design of the AVA ensuring the quality of gas and liquid phases separation was selected. Increasing the number of AVA blades from 6 to 12 contributes to more complete separation. It is proposed to install a static blade axial vortical apparatus in the pipeline before introducing the aqueous gas and oil emulsion into a three-phase separator.