Abstract The shortage of new light oil reservoirs increases the need to explore heavy oil reserves and to deal with viscosity issues on their transportation through pipelines. An attractive procedure to reduce energy consumption of this operation is to pump oil using water as a wall lubricant in a core annular pattern. This method provides high efficiency and high fluid flow rates, being effective in decreasing pressure drop due to the friction reduction. This paper reports an experimental evaluation of the oil-water flow patterns on three consecutive test sections positioned as the sequence: horizontal vertical horizontal and connected by several hydraulic fittings. Also, photographs were taken to demonstrate the influence of those line irregularities and the directional flow changes on the flow patterns and on the attainable energy savings. The overall energy savings regarding the CAF method presented a factor of 2.2, which means that the same amount of oil could be transported at half the cost. The experiments have also shown that above 50% input oil cuts, no relevant energy reduction in order to compensate higher oil fooling risks was verified.

中文翻译：

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通过岩心环形流动模式在重油运输中节省能源：一种实验方法

摘要 新的轻油油藏的短缺增加了勘探稠油储量和解决其通过管道输送的粘度问题的需要。减少该操作能耗的一个有吸引力的方法是使用水作为壁面润滑剂以核心环形模式泵送油。这种方法提供了高效率和高流体流速，有效地减少了由于摩擦减少引起的压降。本文报告了对三个连续测试段的油水流动模式的实验评估，这些测试段按顺序排列：水平垂直水平并由几个液压配件连接。此外，还拍摄了照片以证明这些线路不规则和方向流变化对流动模式和可实现的节能的影响。CAF 方法的总体节能系数为 2.2，这意味着可以以一半的成本运输相同数量的石油。实验还表明，超过 50% 的输入石油削减，没有相关的能源减少以补偿更高的石油愚弄风险。