The separation of fluid-fluid mixtures is a major issue in various sectors. The liquid-liquid hydro-cyclone has a wide range of applications in various sectors due to its great efficiency in separating fluid mixtures, ease of installation, and low cost. In crude oil production, high water is consumed following the degrading of production quality, high processing costs, costs, and environmental impacts. Axial hydro cyclone is a tool for Downhole Oil/Water Separation (DOWS) in the petroleum production industry, but it has limitations. The main purpose of this work is to simulate the effect of compacting the conventional inline hydro cyclone with a converging-diverging nozzle on the oil/water dynamic flow and the separation process to resolve the high water cut problem. This study presents a three-dimensional simulation to compute fluid dynamics using the mixture multiphase and SST k-omega turbulence models for Reynolds numbers less than 66000. The operational flow variables are a mixture: flow rate (14, 28, and 56 m3/h) and oil/water ratio (15/85, 25/75, 30/70, and 35/65). Results indicate an enhancement in the axial and tangential velocity components by 15% and 50%, respectively, for the proposed design compared with the conventional cyclone. The oil separation efficiency for the new design is 89%, while for the conventional cyclone is 60%.
Oil/water emulsions are one of the major threats to environment nowadays, occurs at many stages in the production and treatment of crude oil. The oil recovery process adopted will depend on how the oil is present in the water stream. Oil can be found as free oil, as an unstable oil/water emulsion and also as a highly stable oil/water emulsion. The current study was dedicated to the application of microbubble air flotation process for the removal of such oily emulsions for its characters of cost-effective, simple structure, high efficiency and no secondary pollution. The influence of several key parameters on the process removal efficiency was examined, namely, initial oil concentration, pH value of t
In this study, we fabricated nanofiltration membranes using the electrospinning technique, employing pure PAN and a mixed matrix of PAN/HPMC. The PAN nanofibrous membranes with a concentration of 13wt% were prepared and blended with different concentrations of HPMC in the solvent N, N-Dimethylformamide (DMF). We conducted a comprehensive analysis of these membranes' surface morphology, chemical composition, wettability, and porosity and compared the results. The findings indicated that the inclusion of HPMC in the PAN membranes led to a reduction in surface porosity and fiber size. The contact angle decreased, indicating increased surface hydrophilicity, which can enhance flux and reduce fouling tendencies. Subsequently, we evaluated the e
... Show MoreThe injection of Low Salinity Water (LSWI) as an Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) method has recently attracted a lot of attention. Extensive research has been conducted to investigate and identify the positive effects of LSWI on oil recovery. In order to demonstrate the impact of introducing low salinity water into a reservoir, simulations on the ECLIPSE 100 simulator are being done in this work. To simulate an actual reservoir, an easy static model was made. In order to replicate the effects of injecting low salinity water and normal salinity, or seawater, the reservoir is three-phase with oil, gas, and water. It has one injector and one producer. Five cases were suggested to investigate the effect of low salinity water injection with differen
... Show MoreSingle long spiral tube column pressure swing adsorption (PSA) unit, 25 mm diameter, and 6 m length was constructed to study the separation of water from ethanol at azeotropic concentration of 95 wt%. The first three meters of the column length acted as a vaporizer and the remaining length acted as an adsorber filled by commercial 3A zeolite. The effect of pressure, temperature and feed flow rate on the product ethanol purity, process recovery and productivity were studied. The results showed that ethanol purity increased with temperature and pressure and decreased with feed flow rate. The purity decreased with increasing productivity. The purity range was 98.9 % to 99.6 %, the recovery range was 0.82 to 0.92 and the productivity range w
... Show MoreIn engineering, the ground in seismically active places may be subjected to static and seismic stresses. To avoid bearing capacity collapse, increasing the system's dynamic rigidity, and/or reducing dynamic fluctuations, it may be required to employ deep foundations instead of shallow ones. The axial aptitude and pipe pile distribution of load under static conditions have been well reported, but more study is needed to understand the dynamic axial response. Therefore, this research discusses the outputs of the 3D finite element models on the soil-pile behavior under different acceleration intensities and soil states by using MIDAS GTS NX. The pipe pile was represented as a simple elastic, and a modified Mohr-Coulomb mode
... Show MoreWater/oil emulsion is considered as the most refractory mixture to separate because of the interference of the two immiscible liquids, water and oil. This research presents a study of dewatering of water / kerosene emulsion using hydrocyclone. The effects of factors such as: feed flow rate (3, 5, 7, 9, and 11 L/min), inlet water concentration of the emulsion (5%, 7.5%, 10%, 12.5%, and 15% by volume), and split ratio (0.1, 0.3, 0.5, 0.7, and 0.9) on the separation efficiency and pressure drop were studied. Dimensional analysis using Pi theorem was applied for the first time to model the hydrocyclone based on the experimental data. It was shown that the maximum separation efficiency; at split ratio 0.1, was 94.3% at 10% co
... Show MoreIn the current study, a novel approach for separating ethanol-water mixture by microbubble distillation technology was investigated. Traditional distillation processes require large amounts of energy to raise the liquid to its boiling point to effect removal of volatile components. The concept of microbubble distillation by comparison is to heat the gas phase rather than the liquid phase to achieve separation. The removal of ethanol from the thermally sensitive fermentation broths was taken as a case of study. Consequently the results were then compared with those which could be obtained under equilibrium conditions expected in an “ideal” distillation unit. Microbubble distillation has achieved vapour compositions higher than th
... Show MoreAmong several separation processes, the air flotation distinguish as remarkably high potential separation process related to its high separation efficiency and throughput, energy-efficient, simple process, cost-effective, applicable to a wide range of oily wastewater and no by-products. The current study aimed to investigate the effect of the type and concentration of surfactant on the stability of oil-water emulsion and efficiency of the separation process. For this purpose, three types of surfactant where used (anionic SDS, mixed nonionic Span 85/Tween 80, and cationic CTAB). The results demonstrated that the Span 85/Tween 80 surfactant has the best stability, and it increases with the surfactant concentration augmentation. The removal ef
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