International Society for Industrial Process Tomography

Wire-mesh Sensor Applied for the Visualisation of Gas-Liquid-Solid Flows with Hydrate-like Particles

Eduardo N. dos Santos ^{1, 2*}, Marco J. da Silva ^{1, 2}, Moises A. M. Neto ^{2, 3}, Rigoberto E. M. Morales^{2, 3}

¹ Multiphase Flow Research Center (NUEM)

Federal University of Technology - Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil

² Graduate Program of Electrical and Computer Engineering (CPGEI)

³ Graduate Program of Mechanical and Material Engineering (PPGEM)

^*Email: *e.n.santos@ieee.org

ABSTRACT

In petroleum production, typically gas, oil and water stream in production pipelines, which connect wells to processing units. However, depending on some operational conditions (e.g. temperature and pressure and fluid composition), gas hydrates (ice-like solids) may form and flow in production lines. Introduction of solid particles may affect the behavior of flow which in turn may influence and promote hydrate formation and growth. Hence, this paper reports the application of wire-mesh sensors (WMS) to investigate experimentally solid-liquid-gas flow with the aim to generate data with degree of details to support the development of flow models as well as providing data for validating CFD codes. The tests were performed in a rock-flow cell with the presence of dispersed hydrate-like particles made of polyethylene with 0.5 mm diameter and density similar to gas hydrates (938 kg/m3). The findings provide qualitative information of the phenomena along the process. Moreover, the visualization of the flow structures was obtained with wire-mesh sensor measurements at high resolution, indicating that the technique may be further used for quantitative analysis in the fluid dynamic study of hydrates formation process in pipelines.

Keywords wire-mesh sensor, three-phase flow, hydrates

Industrial Application Oil and gas