Forecasting of Erosion Rate in Tee-Junctions for Liquid-Solid Flow via Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)

Abstract

This work intends to forecast the influence of parameters such as particles size, stream velocities and tee-junctions diameter towards an erosion rate of a tee-junction in light crude oil (C19H30)-solid (sand) flow. A commercially available ANSYS Fluent 2020 R1 (Academic Version)-computational fluid dynamics (CFD) was used to numerically predict the erosion rate in tee-junctions. Three different models were applied in CFD approach named as continuous flow modeling, Lagrangian particle tracking and empirical erosion equation. The ranges of simulated parameters include 100-500 µm particles size, 3-7 m/s stream velocities and 0.0762-0.1778 m tee-junctions diameter. The location of maximum erosion rate for all the simulated parameters are found to be at the mid-section of the tee-junction. The maximum erosion rate is reduced with the increasing of the particles size while increased with the increasing of the stream velocities. However, there is no correlation found for the maximum erosion rate (increased or decreased) with the tee-junctions diameter.

Keywords

• computational fluid dynamics (cfd)
• light crude oil-solid flow
• maximum erosion rate and location
• particles size and stream velocities
• tee-junctions diameter