Investigation of Particle Size Effects on Solid Particle Erosion of Elbows in Series for Liquid-Solid Flows

The entrainment of solid particles within the produced fluids can cause solid particle erosion by impacting the piping of production and transportation facilities. Liquid dominated flows are commonly encountered in deep water subsea pipelines while producing oil and gas fluids. It is of great importance to predict the erosion pattern and magnitude for elbows in series in liquid-solid flows as in the oil and gas productions, liquids tends to produce more solid particles compared to gas-solid flows. In the current work, erosion of elbows in series for different particle sizes are investigated by using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and compare the erosion pattern results with the results of paint removal experiments using a 76.2 mm diameter acrylic elbows, qualitatively. CFD simulations have been performed to study the particle size effects on erosion using Reynolds stress turbulence model (RSM) and Low-Reynolds number K-ε model. Grid refinement studies have been performed and particles are rebounded at the particle radius to accurately examine the effects of particle sizes on solid particle erosion of these elbows. The CFD results shows that significant erosion is observed at the inner wall of the first elbow for larger particles, and the maximum erosion can be seen towards the end of the second elbow for 300 μm particle size.