Evaluate the risk of hydrate blockage inbend flowlines

Abstract

© 2006-2015 Asian Research Publishing Network (ARPN).As oil and gas developments are moving into deeper waters, production strategies are becoming more challenging due to the aggressive environment. Generally, offshore wells have flow lines that transport hydrocarbon between the platforms, manifolds, and onshore facilities are normally lying on the sea bed. In such configuration where the flow lines are curved, there is a high risk of water accumulation at the low spot sections during shutdown operations. A multiphase Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) model based on a Volume of Fluid (VOF) approach is employed to investigate the effect of restart gas superficial velocity at a different liquid patching on the flow pattern within a long pipeline. The flow pattern obtained from the CFD simulations compared well with Baker flow map. Therefore, CFD is demonstrated to be an efficient tool to predict adequately the flow behavior in such pipe flow system. The CFD generated flow pattern map allows for the risk assessment of hydrate blockage, thus pointing out the conditions where the risk is either low or high.