Comparative Analysis of Temperature and Velocity Dual-Coupled Flow Pattern Erosion Law in Sandy Hot Oil Pipelines

Abstract

To investigate the erosion patterns of sandy viscous oil and low-viscosity crude oil in gathering and transportation pipeline on the inner walls of bent pipes， an optimized Discrete Phase Model (DPM) erosion model and a pipeline thin-wall heat transfer structure were employed to simulate the flow process of sandy heavy oil and low-viscosity crude oil based on the coupling effect of temperature and flow rate.Results showed that under the same flow velocity， the change of the viscous oil erosion rate with temperature was consistent with the changing trend of its own Reynolds number，and the erosion area would continue to expand as the temperature increases.The erosion rate of low-viscosity crude oil was easily affected by the flow regime with temperature changes， and its erosion rate would fluctuate significantly in the transition zone， but the erosion zone did not change significantly.As flow velocity escalated， the increase in erosion rate of low viscosity crude oil in the turbulent zone was significantly greater than that of heavy oil， and the lower the oil temperature， the greater the increase in the erosion rate of low-viscosity crude oil.Under the same turbulent transportation state， the change of the crude oil erosion rate was mainly affected by the flow rate， and the reduction of oil temperature had a limited effect on corrosion reduction at elbows.

Keywords

• gathering and transportation pipeline|viscous oil|low-viscosity crude oil|erosion model|coupling effect|erosion rate