Modeling of Heavy-Oil Flow with Regard to Their Rheological Properties

With the depletion of traditional energy resources, the share of heavy-oil production has been increasing recently. According to some estimates, their reserves account for 80% of the world’s oil resources. Costs for extraction of heavy oil and natural bitumen are 3–4 times higher than the costs of extracting light oil, which is due not only to higher density and viscosity indicators but also to insufficient development of equipment and technologies for the extraction, transportation, and processing of such oils. Currently, a single pipeline system is used to pump both light and heavy oil. Therefore, it is necessary to take into account the features of the heavy-oil pumping mode. This paper presents mathematical models of heavy-oil flow in oil-field pipelines. The rheological properties of several heavy-oil samples were determined by experiments. The dependencies obtained were used as input data for a simulation model using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods. The modeling condition investigates the range of shear rates up to 300 s−1. At the same time, results up to 30 s−1 are considered in the developed computational models. The methodology of the research is, thus, based on a CFD approach with experimental confirmation of the results obtained. The proposed rheological flow model for heavy oil reflects the dynamics of the internal structural transformation during petroleum transportation. The validity of the model is confirmed by a comparison between the theoretical and the obtained experimental results. The results of the conducted research can be considered during the selection of heavy-oil treatment techniques for its efficient transportation.

Influence of Rotating Wheels and Moving Ground Use on the Unsteady Wake of a Small-Scale Road Vehicle

New insights into how different ground simulation methods affect road vehicle aerodynamics are presented. Experiments are conducted on a 1/24th-scale model, representative of a Heavy Goods Vehicle, at a Reynolds number, based on width of 2.3 × 105. Particular focus lay in characterising differences in unsteady wake development, with mean drag, base pressures, and wake velocities quantified, compared, and evaluated. Distinctly, these tests include the effects of elevated blockage ratio and wheel rotation. Results show moving ground use can have a substantial influence under these conditions, with increases in wake length and average base pressure coefficient of 17% and 9%, respectively. The dominant wake dynamics, characterised by a global streamwise oscillation commonly referenced as the bubble pumping mode, was also found dependent with asymmetric shedding frequencies from both vertical and horizontal base edges higher with static ground use. For these conditions, development of a low-frequency turbulence source, near omni-directional in nature, positioned behind the model, further contaminates the flow-field. This feature disappears with moving ground use. Both the nature and characteristics of the turbulence generated behind the wheels were also found to evolve differently, with a moving ground promoting stronger and more defined oscillatory behaviour up to model mid-height, two-and-a-half widths downstream. Overall, these results highlight that while variations in time-independent quantities to differing ground simulation can often be very subtle, prompting the interpretation of negligible overall effects, in-depth consideration from a time-dependent perspective may lead to a different conclusion.

Transient Simulation of Underground Pumped Storage Hydropower Plants Operating in Pumping Mode

The increasing penetration of variable renewable energies (VRE) in the European electricity mix requires flexible energy storage systems (ESS), such as pumped storage hydropower (PSH). Disused mining voids from deep closed mines may be used as subsurface reservoirs of underground pumped-storage hydropower (UPSH) plants. Unlike conventional PSH plants, the air pressure in UPSH plants is variable and it differs from the atmospheric conditions. In this paper, the hydraulic transient process of an UPSH plant operating in pumping mode was investigated and a preliminary thermodynamic analysis of the closed surge tank was carried out. Analytical and CFD three-dimensional numerical simulations based on the volume of fluid (VOF) model with two-phase flow have been performed for analyzing the transient process. In the transient simulation, air and water are considered as ideal gas and compressible liquid, respectively. Different guide vanes closing schemes have been simulated. The obtained results show that the dimensioning of underground reservoir, surge tank, and air ducts is essential for ensuring the hydraulic performance and optimizing the operation of UPSH plants. The static pressure in the air duct, surge tank and lower reservoir reaches −1.6, 112.8 and −4 kPa, respectively, while a heat flux of −80 W was obtained through the surge tank walls.

On-chip Mixing, Pumping and Concentrating Effects by Using AC Electrothermal Flow

Background:Microfluidic manipulation (including: pumping, mixing and concentrating effects) is highly challengeable for bioengineering and on-chip analysis applications such as point-of-care immune-detection systems. In this research we propose a configurable electrode structure to form various manipulation effects including pumping, mixing and concentrating processes by applying an Alternate Current (AC) electrokinetically-driven flow.Methods:By applying an inhomogeneous electric field causes temperature rise accompanied by temperature gradients generation inside the microchannel. As a result, an AC electrothermal flow generates inside the channel, which is efficient to generate mixing, pumping and concentrating effects.Results:The proposed system is studied numerically by Finite-Element-Method, Based on the results, a) bulk fluid velocity of 100 µm/s is achieved by exciting the electrodes in pumping mode, b) complete mixing efficiency is observed in mixing mode, c) for antibody-antigen binding process (concentrating mode), the surface reaction increases by the factor of 9 after 5 seconds of sample loading. Results reveal that the system is highly efficient for bio-fluid mediums.Conclusion:AC electrothermal fluid manipulation process was investigated numerically inside a microchannel for biological buffers. Back and forth fluid motions, clockwise/counter-clockwise rotational vortexes and also antibody-antigen linking enhancement were achieved by engineering the specific electrode patterns. The manipulation efficiency improves by increasing both the amplitude of electric potential and the ionic strength of biofluid. As a result, our proposed configurable device is of interest for onchip immunoassays and point-of-care devices.

Suppression of hump characteristic for a pump-turbine using leading-edge protuberance

The application of wave guide vanes with bio-inspired leading-edge protuberances to the hump characteristic of a pump-turbine is examined in this study. Numerical simulation with a shear-stress transport turbulence model is used to calculate the three-dimensional flow in a pump-turbine in pumping mode. Three tubercle amplitudes of 0.02c, 0.04c, and 0.08c (c is chord length), and three spanwise wavenumbers (2/s, 4/s and 8/s, s is the length of span) for guide vanes are especially considered. The results obtained show that the simulated performances of original guide vanes are found to be in good qualitative agreement with experimental data, supporting the validation of the computational fluid dynamics method. For different wave guide vanes with leading-edge protuberances, it is shown that the hump characteristic of the pump-turbine in pumping mode is effectively improved. This is due to improved flow fields below the tongue in view of entropy production and vector field. The energy loss can be clearly compared through the entropy distribution for different locations of the guide vanes, and it is improved for the wave guide vanes with bio-inspired leading-edge protuberances. For current pump-turbine, the optimal amplitude and wavenumber are found to be around 0.04c and 4/s.