Sand Erosion Inside Pipe Of Crude Oil With 90° Bend By Cfd

In oil and gas industry API RP 14 E is the most commonly used tool to evaluate production rate to limit erosion in oil and gas transportation system which received many criticism to be so simple and requiring little input. The objective of this simulation study are to simulate the flow of crude above wax appearance temperature (WAT) in pipe with 90° bend with varying parameter such as; flow rate, viscosity, sand particle size and geometry. A few assumptions have been made which are; Single phase crude oil flow, 3-Dimensional Flows, Fully Developed Turbulent Flows, Steady State Flows and Adiabatic. The geometry is developed using the Gambit 2.2.30 software. After that the geometry is exported to the Fluent 6.2.16 to be simulated. Mesh grid dependency is conducted to select the mesh which is suitable for the simulation. It is important to be done to avoid error. The basis of the simulation case are; Inlet Bulk Velocity = 1.8 m/s2, temperature 50°C (773 K), sand particle Size of 50μm, and adiabatic. The result showing that as the bulk velocity increase, the erosion rates at 90° bend increases. The Barton (2003) statement is compared with the result of the effect of viscosity of the fluid to the erosion rate. The erosion rate at 90° bend is high when the particle size is small and reduces as the particle size is increased. The effect of introducing a small pipe at 90° bend area is also observed. The erosion rate at the downstream of the pipe significantly reduces for in the new geometry. Overall, the simulation is successfully performed using the CFD Numerical Software and the objectives are achieved.