For many years, particle transportation has been an important area of research interest for different industries such as mining, oil, and gas where the prediction of the critical flow rate in multiphase flow has been a concern. In particular, sand is often produced out of the onshore and offshore reservoirs that pose several risks like increased frictional pressure losses and a higher risk of corrosion leading to equipment failure in production systems. Over the last 50 years, many researchers investigated the particle flow physics of various shapes and sizes experimentally and developed either empirical or mechanistic models that can predict the critical velocity for sand to keep moving in individual flow regimes such as stratified or slug flow. However, there is not a single unified model that can predict the critical velocity required to transport the sand particles without forming a sand bed or stopping under different mechanisms. The major goal of this work was to develop a unified mechanistic model to predict the lowest flow rate (critical flow rate) required to constantly move the particles in multiphase flow under different flow regimes for various pipe diameters. The unified model incorporates the concentration limit, baseline velocity and critical velocity above the concentration limit in horizontal and inclined pipes. A comparison of the proposed unified mechanistic model shows that it captures the essence of experimental data and considers the effect of various physical parameters.


A Unified Mechanistic Model for Particle Transport in Horizontal and Inclined Pipelines and Wellbores

Division / Sponsors: 
Heat Transfer Division (HTD), Fluids Engineering Division (FED)

Heat Transfer Summer Conference
Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/HT/HT2020/volume/83709

18th International Conference on Nanochannels, Microchannels, and Minichannels
Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/ICNMM/ICNMM2020/volume/83693

Fluids Engineering Division Summer Meeting
Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/FEDSM/FEDSM2020/volume/83716

HT-ICNMM2020 - Virtual Conference, SHTC - Virtual Conference, FEDSM2020 - Virtual Conference

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