A Numerical Study of Sand Particle Erosion in Elbow and a Series of Plugged Tees in Gas-Particle Two-Phase Flow

Author(s):  
A. Farokhipour ◽  
Z. Mansoori ◽  
M. Saffar-Avval ◽  
M. A. Rasoulian ◽  
A. Rasteh ◽  
...  

Sand particle erosion is the main cause of the failure of bends in the natural gas pipelines. The rapid progress of computational power and modern numerical methods has provided the opportunity for developing realistic simulation of the erosion process. The goal of this paper is to predict the sand erosion rates with the use of computational fluid dynamics in the gas/solid flows in the plugged tees and standard elbows. For this purpose, the Eulerian-Lagrangian approach was used. To simulate the flow, the SIMPLE algorithm and the k-ω SST turbulence model were used. Particles were injected into the inlet pipe with different sizes. To predict more realistic results the Grant and Tabakoff stochastic rebound model was applied and the Oka model was used to calculate erosion. The results showed that, the use of plugged tee instead of a standard elbow would reduce the erosion rate only for fine particles. Also, for them, by increasing the plugged length the pipe will experience less erosion. For coarser particles, however, the vortex created in the plugged section did not affect the particles velocity; therefore, the erosion rate was not reduced.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Farokhipour ◽  
Z. Mansoori ◽  
M. Saffar-Avval ◽  
G. Ahmadi

Abstract In the oil and gas industry, sand particle erosion damage to elbows is a common problem. The ability to predict erosion patterns is of great importance for sizing lines, analyzing failures, and limiting production rates. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) can be utilized to study the erosion behavior and mitigate the erosion problem for safety purposes and greater equipment longevity. In order to alleviate the adverse results of sand erosion in elbows, the current study investigated the potential of the geometrically induced swirl flow generated from flow passing through a four-lobed twisted pipe upstream of an elbow. To this end, first, the airflow in a standard elbow equipped with different swirl pipes was simulated using the SIMPLE method, then an Eulerian-Lagrangian approach was employed to track the particles, and finally, the erosion rate was computed. The simulation results indicated that the elbow’s maximum erosion rate with twisted pipes placed upstream of the elbow is lower than the one obtained for the standard pipe. In addition, as the twisted pipe position gets closer to the bend, the erosion rate further reduces. Thus, swirling flows provide a promising prospect as a mechanism to control the erosion rate in elbows.


Author(s):  
Yu Wang ◽  
Qi He ◽  
Ming Liu ◽  
Weixiong Chen ◽  
Junjie Yan

In pulverized coal-fired plant, the U-type bend is commonly used in flue gas and pulverized coal pipe system to due to the constraints of outer space. And gas-solid two-phase flow exists in these pipelines. The erosion of the pipe has significant effect on the safety and reliability of pipelines. In present paper, the erosion characteristics of U-type bend were investigated through CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) method. The wear distribution on the pipe wall was obtained. And the particle flow characteristics in U-type bend were analyzed. The influence of inlet velocity, mass loading rate and particle size on the erosion rate was studied as well. Result suggested that the maximum erosion rate increases exponentially with the increase of inlet velocity. And maximum erosion rate increases linearly with the increasing mass loading rate. Increasing particle size can aggravate the wear on the pipe wall.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 1423 ◽  
Author(s):  
Md Rakibuzzaman ◽  
Hyoung-Ho Kim ◽  
Kyungwuk Kim ◽  
Sang-Ho Suh ◽  
Kyung Kim

Effective hydraulic turbine design prevents sediment and cavitation erosion from impacting the performance and reliability of the machine. Using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) techniques, this study investigated the performance characteristics of sediment and cavitation erosion on a hydraulic Francis turbine by ANSYS-CFX software. For the erosion rate calculation, the particle trajectory Tabakoff–Grant erosion model was used. To predict the cavitation characteristics, the study’s source term for interphase mass transfer was the Rayleigh–Plesset cavitation model. The experimental data acquired by this study were used to validate the existing evaluations of the Francis turbine. Hydraulic results revealed that the maximum difference was only 0.958% compared with the CFD data, and 0.547% compared with the experiment (Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM)). The turbine blade region was affected by the erosion rate at the trailing edge because of their high velocity. Furthermore, in the cavitation–erosion simulation, it was observed that abrasion propagation began from the pressure side of the leading edge and continued along to the trailing edge of the runner. Additionally, as sediment flow rates grew within the area of the attached cavitation, they increased from the trailing edge at the suction side, and efficiency was reduced. Cavitation–sand erosion results then revealed a higher erosion rate than of those of the sand erosion condition.


Author(s):  
A. Rasteh ◽  
A. Farokhipour ◽  
M. A. Rasoulian ◽  
Z. Mansoori ◽  
M. Saffar-Avval ◽  
...  

Abstract Fracking (fracturing) is of great importance for enhancing oil and gas production from low permeability reservoirs. Since in fracking fluid, suspension of sand particles are used, the erosion failure of fracturing equipment has become an increasing concern. Accordingly, investigation of erosion of commonly used fittings such as ball seats in order to decrease its adverse consequences has attracted considerable attentions. Although the erosion wear of gas-solid flows in the pipe sudden expansion was investigated in the literature, the effect of particle size, ball seat shape and the contraction configurations on the erosion-induced wear is not fully understood. This study is aimed to explore the most erosion-resistant configuration of a ball seat under various operational conditions. A CFD model is used and a wide range of geometries are investigated. The studied configurations are categorized in three main groups including single cone, double cone and curved cone. In each category, different cone angles and curve styles are considered. The results showed that, among the single cone ball seats, the cone angle of 15° is the most erosion-resistant configuration. It was also shown that the third-order curve style cone has the best erosion performance.


Author(s):  
A. Farokhipour ◽  
Z. Mansoori ◽  
M. Saffar-Avval ◽  
S. A. Shirazi ◽  
G. Ahmadi

Abstract In many industrial applications, gas-liquid-particle three-phase flows are observed. Predicting erosion damage in this type of flow is a challenging issue, and so many factors, such as the liquid film behavior have significant effects on the erosion rate. In the present study, the Eulerian-Lagrangian approach was implemented to study the process of sand particle erosion in elbows with different bend angles. For this purpose, gas and liquid phases under annular flow conditions were introduced at the pipe inlet, and the volume of fluid (VOF) method was employed to solve the governing equations. For evaluating the erosion rate, the Det Norske Veritas (DNV) model was applied. The predicted erosion results for the bend angles of 30°, 60° and 90° at different orientations were compared with those of the two-phase gas-particle flows. The simulation results indicated that for gas-liquid-particle flow, the behavior of film thickness in the bend plays a major role on the particle impact velocity and the corresponding erosion rates. By comparing the impact characteristics for gas and liquid superficial velocities of 40 and 0.4 m/s, respectively, in the 90° elbow, it was found that the impact velocities for gas-particle and gas-liquid-particle flows at the erosion hotspot are 38 and 14 m/s, respectively. In addition, among the studied geometries, the 30° elbow is the most erosion-resistant bend angle configuration among those studied for both two- and three-phase flows.


Author(s):  
Alireza Asgharpour ◽  
Peyman Zahedi ◽  
Hadi Arabnejad Khanouki ◽  
Siamack A. Shirazi ◽  
Brenton S. McLaury

Solid particle erosion in elbows is of great importance in the pipeline design process. In many situations, elbows are mounted in series with small distances between each other. Due to changes in flow direction and particles concentration after the first elbow, a significant change in erosion magnitude and pattern in the downstream elbows (second elbow) might be expected. The aim of this study is to investigate the solid particle erosion behavior in the second elbow. In the experimental study using a state-of-art ultrasonic technique, erosion magnitudes in two standard 4-inch elbows separated by a distance of 10 pipe diameter have been measured. Experiments have been conducted in single and two-phase flow regimes for different particle sizes and gas and liquid velocities. In most of the cases, the maximum erosion in the second elbow was less than the first elbow, and the erosion pattern in the second elbow was slightly different than the first elbow. Comparison of single and two-phase flow results for both elbows revealed that in two-phase flow regime a major reduction in erosion magnitude happens as a results of the presence of liquid in the pipe. Additionally, for further considerations, the experimental conditions have been simulated numerically using ANSYS FLUENT software. Simulations have been performed for different mesh grids and turbulence models to examine how they influence the erosion in the second elbow as both can affect the particles trajectories. The accuracy of the numerical results are evaluated with available experimental data. For most of the cases, the erosion predictions are in a good agreement with experimental results. For both elbows by increasing the gas velocity and particle size, the maximum erosion increased.


2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 3988-4000
Author(s):  
N. H. Saeid

Two-phase turbulent flow of crude oil and sand in a choke valve is analysed in the present article using 3D computational fluid dynamics simulations. The discrete phase mathematical model is used to simulate the sand flow and its interaction with the oil flow in the system. Parametric study is done to identify the governing parameters to minimize the sand erosion in the system. The valve geometry and dimensions are taken from an industrial oil production project. The parameter considered in the present study are the percentage valve opening, flow rate of the sand and the pressure difference between the inlet and outlet pipes. The simulation results are presented to show the erosion rate variation with the valve opening, sand flow rate and the pressure difference. It is found that the erosion rate is high for small valve opening as well as large valve opening. Minimum erosion rate is found when the valve opening is between 20-30% for all the cases with various pressure differences. Locations of maximum erosion rate are predicted in the simulations.


Author(s):  
Jin-Sung Jang ◽  
Hyung-Gun Sung ◽  
Seung-Young Yoo ◽  
Tae-Seong Roh ◽  
Dong-Whan Choi

Analysis of the interior ballistics is essential for the development of gun or propellant configurations. The granular solid propellants with high energy and fast burning rate produce a large thrust in extremely short time intervals. For the study of these, therefore, it is necessary of a numerical code for the two-phase flow of the interior ballistics. Recently, an interior ballistics code (IBcode) for the two-phase flow using the Eulerian-Lagrangian approach has been developed. The SIMPLE algorithm and the SMART scheme have been used for the IBcode. The ghost-cell extrapolation method has been used for the moving boundary with the projectile movement. In this study, a performance of the interior ballistics according to the position of the solid propellant in the chamber has been investigated using the IBcode. In previous researches, propellants had been evenly distributed in the chamber. In this study, however, three cases of the existence of empty space in the chamber at which the propellants are not evenly distributed have been considered; Propellants are located in the region near the base, propellants in the region near the breech, and propellants in the center of the chamber, respectively. The 7-perforated configuration of the solid propellant has been used in this research. The results have shown the performance variations of the interior ballistics according to solid propellant position in the chamber. The cases of the propellants located in the region near the base and breech have shown that the value of the negative differential pressure and the difference between the breech pressure and the base pressure are much higher than those of the propellants located in the center of the chamber. The case of the propellants in the center of the chamber is, therefore, more profitable to improve the performance of the interior ballistics.


2014 ◽  
Vol 554 ◽  
pp. 566-570
Author(s):  
Mehdi Nakisa ◽  
Adi Maimun Abdul Malik ◽  
Yasser M. Ahmed ◽  
Sverre Steen ◽  
Fatemeh Behrouzi ◽  
...  

Numerical study and RANS simulations have been applied to investigate the incompressible free surface flow around the stern hull of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) ship affected by working propeller behind of her. Experimental works are carried out using LNG ship model in Marine Teknologi Center (MTC) of Univrsiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) to verify the computational fluid dynamic (CFD) results. Ansys-CFX 14.0 based on viscous flow finite volume code using the two-phase Eulerian–Eulerian fluid approach and shear stress transport (SST) turbulence model have been used in this study. A tetrahedral unstructured combined with prism grid were used with the viscous flow code for meshing the computational domain of water surface around it. CFD simulation has been verified using available experimental results. Finally, the flow structure, streamlines, velocity and pressure distribution around stern hull and propeller zone are discussed and analysed.


Author(s):  
Mikio Sakai ◽  
Yoshinori Yamada ◽  
Yusuke Shigeto ◽  
Shin Mizutani ◽  
Shao Yang ◽  
...  

The Discrete Element Method (DEM) is widely used in various numerical simulations related to granular media. The DEM is a Lagrangian approach where individual particle is calculated based on the Newton’s second law of motion. Therefore, the DEM enables us to investigate the granular flow characteristics at the particle level. On the other side, the DEM has a difficulty to be applied in large-scale powder systems because the calculation cost becomes too expensive when the number of particles is huge. To solve this issue, we have developed a coarse grain modeling as a large scale model of the DEM. The coarse grain particle represents a group of original particles. The coarse grain model was used in typical gas-solid and solid-liquid two phase flows so far, where the particle size was relatively large, namely, cohesive force did not act between the solid particles. In the present study, the coarse grain model is evolved to simulate fine particles by considering the interparticle van der Waals force. The adequacy of the coarse grain model is proved by comparing the simulation results of original particle system. Through this study, the coarse grain model is shown to simulate the cohesive particle behavior precisely.


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