(451k) Computational Fluid Dynamics & Multiphase Flow Modeling & Simulation for Flow Assurance in Field Applications

Flow assurance is a crucial aspect that impacts the production of hydrocarbons in the oil and gas industry. Some of the factors that affect flow assurance include fluids chemistry, thermodynamics, equipment geometry, and multiphase flow dynamics. With the recent advancements in computational capabilities in both software and hardware, modeling and simulation tools are becoming more commonly utilized to model and analyze complicated fluid flow problems. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is used extensively in many engineering applications to analyze fluid flow. In many field applications, chemicals are often used to resolve flow assurance issues; however, the performance of chemicals injected is highly dependent on other factors such as equipment geometry and the dynamics of the fluid flow. To better understand and visualize how chemicals perform in the actual field, CFD simulation is used to model chemical injections as well as multiphase flow for different field applications. 

In this paper, modeling of a chemical displacement in an injection line using a spacer fluid  is performed in order to minimize the risk of unacceptable incompatibility if two chemicals are mixed at a certain concentration ratios. Also, the behavior of an untreated seawater slug in a very long pipeline is simulated to understand its impact on the structure integrity. Finally, CFD multiphase flow simulation is utilized to optimize subsea equipment design for PowerJump®, the multiphase subsea booster system, to avoid potential flow assurance problems.