Experimental Study on Slug Flow Characteristics and its Suppression by Microbubbles in Gas-Liquid Mixture Pipeline

Abstract

In the oil-gas mixture transportation system of offshore oilfields, it is of great theoretical and practical significance to study the flow characteristics of the slug flow and its suppression or elimination. In this paper, the characteristics of the slug flow and microbubbles in a laboratory-scale rig are experimentally studied and analyzed by a multi-parameters measurement system including electrical resistance tomography (ERT), high-speed camera, and traditional pressure sensor. The suppression of the microbubbles on the slug flow formation is further investigated. Experimental results showed that the bubbles with different sizes from the microbubble generator have different aggregation and dispersion characteristics. The microbubbles can suppress the formation of the slug flow by increasing the liquid slug pressure and further affect the motion of the slug by enhancing the disturbance effect of the boundary layer, so as to achieve the suppression on slug flow.

Keywords

• slug flow; microbubbles; electrical resistance tomography; high-speed imaging; suppression.