การจำลองการแยกน้ำ-น้ำมันโดยไฮโดรไซโคลน

Abstract

The aim of this project is to apply the Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) technique to simulate 3D flow within hydrocyclones for seawater-crude oil separation. The turbulent characteristics of the flow were modelled by using Reynoldes Stress Model (RSM) in CFD code. The performance of two hydrocyclones of Colman and Thew (Amini et al., 2012) and Bai and Wang (Bai et al., 2011) were investigated. The effect of inlet velocity on the separation performance was also studied. It was found that the Colman and Thew hydrocyclone gave better separation performance than that of Bai and Wang hydrocyclone. An increase in inlet velocity leads to increase the separate performance. Multi-Stage hydrocyclone system was applied in order to enhance the crude-oil separation. Two types of multi-stage hydrocyclone system were conducted in this study. The first system consists of Colman and Thew (2012) and Bai and Wang (2011) and the second system consists of two Bai and Wang hydrocyclones. The second system yields better separation and can reduce the number of operation unit for high concentration feed. The flow simulation results from this work can apply as a design tool for seawater-crude oil separation hydrocyclone.