Open Access

ARTICLE

FLOW CHARACTERISTICS OF WET NATURAL GAS IN DIFFERENT THROTTLING DEVICES

Xuewen Cao^a,b,*, Qi Chu^a,b, Xiaodan Song^a,b, Yuxuan Li^a,b, Jiang Bian^a,b

a Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Oil & Gas Storage and Transportation Safety, Qingdao 266580, China
b College of Pipeline and Civil Engineering, China University of Petroleum (East China), Qingdao 266580, China

* Corresponding Author: E-mail: .

Frontiers in Heat and Mass Transfer 2019, 13, 1-9. https://doi.org/10.5098/hmt.13.2

Abstract

Wet natural gas widely exists in the natural gas industry, and the selection of throttling devices plays an important role in wet natural gas transportation. In order to study the flow field characteristics of different throttling devices in wet natural gas pipelines, a set of Laval nozzles, orifice plates, and plate valves have been designed. The standard k-ε model was selected for numerical simulation. By changing inlet pressure, inlet temperature or volume fraction of water-liquid, the pressure field and temperature fields of different throttling devices were obtained, and the influence of the presence of a shockwave on the flow fields of the throttling devices was analyzed. Different throttling devices have significantly different operating characteristics. Therefore, appropriate throttling devices should be selected in different conditions in order to control the pressure of wet natural gas transportation and reduce gas hydrate formation. The present simulation results show that under identical conditions, the throat pressure and temperature of the Laval nozzle are the lowest, the throat pressure of the orifice plate is the highest, and the throat temperature of the plate valve is the highest.

---

Keywords

---