Open Access

ARTICLE

Experimental and Numerical Analysis of Oil-Water Flow with Drag Reducing Polymers in Horizontal Pipes

by Amer A. Abdulrahman¹, Bashar J. Kadhim¹, Zainab Y. Shnain¹, Hassan Sh. Majidi², Asawer A. Alwaiti^1,*, Farooq Al-Sheikh¹, Adnan A. AbdulRazak¹, Mohammed Shorbaz¹, Mazin J. Shibeeb³

1 Chemical Engineering Department, University of Technology, Baghdad, Iraq
2 Department of Chemical Engineering and Petroleum Industries, Al-Mustaqbal University College, Babylon, Iraq
3 East Baghdad Southern EBS PETROLEUM COMPANY, Baghdad, Iraq

* Corresponding Author: Asawer A. Alwaiti. Email:

(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Recent advancements in thermal fluid flow applications)

Fluid Dynamics & Materials Processing 2023, 19(10), 2579-2595. https://doi.org/10.32604/fdmp.2023.027454

Received 31 October 2022; Accepted 08 February 2023; Issue published 25 June 2023

Abstract

The well-known frictional effect related to liquid-liquid two-phase flow in pipelines can be reduced using drag-reducing additives. In this study, such an effect has been investigated experimentally using a mixture of oil and water. Moreover, numerical simulations have been carried out using the COMSOL simulation software. The measurements were taken in a horizontal pipe with the length and diameter equal to 3 and 0.125 m, respectively. Moreover, Polyethylene oxide with 150 ppm was exploited to reduce the drag effect while considering different water-to-oil fractions (0.3, 0.4, 0.5, and 0.7) and a constant total flow velocity of 2.3 m/s. As made evident by the results, a significant reduction can be obtained in terms of pressure drop, which becomes even more significant as the water to oil fraction is increased. The maximum achieved drag reduction is 70% with a water fraction of 0.7. The results also show that the addition of polymer additives can also have an impact on the flow pattern. Comparison of experimental and numerically determined pressure drop indicates that the error is smaller than 7%.

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Keywords

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