315d

Modeling and Simulation of Oil-Water Separation Using Subsea Equipments

Giovani Cavalcanti Nunes1, Carlos Eduardo Fontes2, Jaime Neiva Miranda de Souza2, and Magno Antonio Calil Resende Silveira2. (1) Petrobras, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, (2) Chemtech – A Siemens Company, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

During the last years, all recent petroleum findings were located at continental platforms under increasing depths. In this scenario, not only the extraction becomes more difficult, but also the fluid transportation turns to be a huge challenge. Phase separation, hydrate formation and severe slugging are just some of the potential problems that may arise during the petroleum flow since the wheel until the separator at the rig. Based on this situation, many research centers throughout the world are trying to find a solution for the logistic and technical problems associated to petroleum extraction under deep waters. Computational simulations can be a very powerful and useful tool for new processes development and should be used in order to reduce the costs and risks associated to this kind of development. CENPES/PETROBRAS and CHEMTECH have been working on this field during the last two years and, in this work, it is presented their main results. The developed code is capable to simulate the fluid flow transient behavior from the wheel until the topside separator, considering the following phenomena: phase separation, hydrate formation and severe slugging. Subsea and topside separators and hydrocyclone models were included in the code (Figure 1). Validation and preliminary tests indicate that it can be used to design control strategies, to foresee potential process problems and to optimize equipments and process efficiency.