Purpose

Offshore industries encounter severe production downtime due to high liquid carryovers in the T-junction. The diameter ratio and flow regime can significantly affect the excess liquid carryovers. Unfortunately, regular and reduce T-junctions have low separation efficiencies. Ansys as a commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software was used to model and numerically inspect a novel diverging T-junction design. The purpose of diverging T-junction is to merge the specific characteristics of regular and reduced T-junctions, ultimately increasing separation efficiency. The purpose of this study is to numerically compute the separation efficiency for five distinct diverging T-junctions for eight different velocity ratios. The results were compared to regular and converging T-junctions.

Design/methodology/approach

Air-water slug flow was simulated with the help of the volume of the fluid model, coupled with the K-epsilon turbulence model to track liquid-gas interfaces.

Findings

The results of this study indicated that T-junctions with upstream and downstream diameter ratio combinations of 0.8–1 and 0.5–1 achieved separation efficiency of 96% and 94.5%, respectively. These two diverging T-junctions had significantly higher separation efficiencies when compared to regular and converging T-junctions. Results also revealed that over-reduction of upstream and downstream diameter ratios below 0.5 and 1, respectively, lead to declination in separation efficiency.

Research limitations/implications

The present study is constrained for air and water as working fluids. Nevertheless, the results apply to other applications as well.

Practical implications

The proposed T-junction is intended to reduce excessive liquid carryovers and frequent plant shutdowns. Thus, lowering operational costs and enhancing separation efficiency.

Social implications

Higher separation efficiency achieved by using diverging T-junction enabled reduced production downtimes and resulted in lower maintenance costs.

Originality/value

A novel T-junction design was proposed in this study with a separation efficiency of higher than 90%. High separation efficiency eliminates loss of time during shutdowns and lowers maintenance costs. Furthermore, limitations of this study were also addressed as the lower upstream and downstream diameter ratio does not always enhance separation efficiency.

中文翻译：

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段塞流发散T形接头分离效率数值评价

目的

由于 T 形接头中的大量液体残留物，海上工业会遇到严重的生产停工期。直径比和流动状态会显着影响过量的液体残留物。不幸的是，规则的和减少的 T 形接头的分离效率很低。Ansys 作为一种商业计算流体动力学 (CFD) 软件用于对一种新颖的发散 T 形接头设计进行建模和数值检查。发散 T 形接头的目的是融合规则 T 形接头和缩减 T 形接头的特定特性，最终提高分离效率。本研究的目的是对 8 种不同速度比的 5 种不同发散 T 型接头的分离效率进行数值计算。将结果与规则和收敛的 T 形接头进行比较。

设计/方法/方法

借助流体模型的体积模拟空气-水段塞流，并结合 K-epsilon 湍流模型跟踪液-气界面。

发现

这项研究的结果表明，上游和下游直径比组合为 0.8-1 和 0.5-1 的 T 型接头分别实现了 96% 和 94.5% 的分离效率。与常规和收敛的 T 型接头相比，这两个发散的 T 型接头具有显着更高的分离效率。结果还表明，将上游和下游直径比分别过度降低到 0.5 和 1 以下会导致分离效率下降。

研究限制/影响

本研究受限于空气和水作为工作流体。然而，结果也适用于其他应用程序。

实际影响

提议的 T 形接头旨在减少过多的液体残留和频繁的工厂停工。因此，降低了运营成本并提高了分离效率。

社会影响

通过使用发散的 T 形接头实现更高的分离效率，从而减少了生产停机时间并降低了维护成本。

原创性/价值

本研究提出了一种新颖的 T 形接头设计，分离效率高于 90%。高分离效率消除了停机期间的时间损失并降低了维护成本。此外，该研究的局限性也得到了解决，因为较低的上游和下游直径比并不总能提高分离效率。