Erosion in Annular Flow and Low Liquid Loading: Small Particles Effects

During the production and transportation of petroleum raw products from remote wells to processing facilities, multiphase flows are usually encountered in pipelines. Among the various regimes of this multiphase flow, annular flows are most dominant. Due to the discovery of oil reserves in remote areas, it has become a challenge to transport these petroleum products from remote locations to processing plants in cost-effective and safe manner. Hence, in order to assure safe and profitable production operations, operators must maintain the integrity of their production systems by minimizing corrosion and/or erosion.

Previous experimental studies in multiphase flow conditions at E/CRC are mostly done for 300, 150 and 75 microns. However, some experiments at E/CRC have shown the in some cases such as sudden expansion geometries, small particles (as small as 25 um) cause significant erosion. Furthermore, these small particles are affected more by the highly turbulent region of the flow, hence causing severe erosion. Therefore, this study will expand our current sand erosion database in pipelines for gas-dominant multiphase flows, which will help in the validation and expansion of SPPS.