INTEC   05402
INSTITUTO DE DESARROLLO TECNOLOGICO PARA LA INDUSTRIA QUIMICA
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
NUMERICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL EVALUATION OF SKIMMER TANK TECHNOLOGIES FOR GRAVITY SEPARATION OF OIL IN PRODUCED WATER
Autor/es:
RAMAJO DAMIAN; RAVICULE MARCELA; MOCCIARO, CLARISA; WEISSMAN; NIGRO NORBERTO
Lugar:
Salta
Reunión:
Congreso; MECOM 2012; 2012
Institución organizadora:
AMCA
Resumen:
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)and experimental tests were used to carry out acomparative study of gravity separation using skimmer tank technologies for removing low oilconcentrations remaining in produced water. In this work, two technologies were evaluated; onewithout internals (called descendent flow technology) and the other with internals (called baffletechnology). For experimental tests, a pilot tank of 2000 liters was built. The flow, residence time andcanalization effects were evaluated by performing conductivity measurements, injecting a sodiumchloride pulse at the inlet and measuring conductivity profile at the outlet. For the first technology(descendent flow) canalization was strong, and that was evidenced by several conductivity peaks a fewminutes after salt injection (the mean theoretical residence time was 4 hours). On the other hand, forbaffle technology only one conductivity peak was detected after 140 minutes, showing the much morevolume efficiency of the tank.At first, CFD validation of experimental data was performed by solving the advection-diffusiontransport equation for salt concentration(eulerian strategy) over a steady state flow previouslycalculated for water. Although this methodology catches the first peak for the descendent flowtechnology, the subsequent peaks are not evidenced. For this reason, an alternative strategy (particletracking) was used to represent salt flow, allowing to reproduce the full conductivity data profile andto estimate the mean residence time for both skimmer tanks.Computational time was considerably reduced by the use of lagrangian strategy. Results fromdescendent flow technology were in good agreement with experimental data, leading to the conclusionthat the implemented CFD strategies is suitable for evaluation and design of skimmer tanks with longresidence time.