Performance Optimization Of Inline Separator

Inline Separator technology has been applied in a number of onshore and offshore wells to separate oil and water. The Benefits of using this technology include reduced produced water, as well as a significant reduction in cost of surface facilities. In addition, inline separator system is an environment friendly technology so it can be replace conventional separator. The intent of this project is to investigate and analyze the flow characteristics of the single phase in inline separator. Nine models with different inlet velocities and swirl angles were used to study the behavior of the flow in inline separator. For this purpose, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) Ansys –fluent is utilized to simulate these models. The radial distribution of the static pressure and axial velocity are also discussed. Multi objective optimization study of pressure drop in inline separator has been performed using CFD data and response surface methodology. Finally, the result has shown that the inlet velocity has more effect than swirl angle on the separation performance.