Experimental Study On Gas-liquid-solid Three-phase Separation

Gas-liquid-solid three-phase separation is one of the newest research trends on hydrocyclone separation technique. With the continuous development of our oilfields, sand content and gas content of oilfield production fluid increases year by year, the existence of these impurities will make oilfield surface treatment process a more complex, and increase oilfield production cost. Using three-phase separation technology, simultaneous separation of gas-liquid-solid system can be implemented, complex degree of impurities removing will be greatly reduced, treatment scale of ground produced liquid and environmental pollution also can be reduced evidently. According to complicated composition of oilfield produced liquid, and combined with the previous research, two new kinds of prototypes of three-phase separation hydrocyclones are designed in this paper, and they are used to deal with simulation medium.This paper uses the FLUENT software to make a simulation for a designed three-phase separation hydrocyclones, including the internal velocity distribution, pressure distribution and concentration distribution in the hydrocyclone. By means of simulation study, the feasibility of the two kinds of prototypes to complete gas-liquid-solid three-phase separation is determined, and two hydrocyclone prototypes with different structures are produced. A lot of experiments are conducted, the properties of two hydrocyclones are studied, split ratio, gas-liquid volume ratio, overflow outlet size, inlet liquid flow and other parameters are further determined. Then the two prototypes are compared, a better prototype structure is determined.This paper will play a certain promotion function for the study of three-phase hydrocyclone separation technique, and consequently another feasible measure is put forward for widening application field of hydrocyclone separator.