Multiphase Flow and Flow Assurance

Flow Assurance is the use of fluid and solid mechanics, heat transfer, mass transfer, fluid properties, chemical additives, and phase behavior applied to production and transportation of oil, gas, and produced water, and to associated problems caused by wax, hydrates, asphaltenes, foam, corrosion, erosion, and sand. Practitioners use single- and multi-phase models for flow in one dimension and computational fluid mechanics models for flow in two or three dimensions, to help design the flow systems, measure and analyze their performance. A survey is given of the physical problems encountered and limitations of the tools used.