CFD Analysis of Airflow in the Oil Reservoir

Abstract

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and experimental tests were used to carry out a comparative study of gravity separation using skimmer tank technologies for removing low oil concentrations remaining in produced water. In this work, three technologies were evaluated; one without internals (called descendent flow technology), second one is with internals (called baffle technology) and the other is with perforate baffles. To determine the flow distribution pattern and residence time. Compare  baffle technology model’s result with graphical visualization from the literature. CFD results were in good agreement with experimental ones( literatures). However, the suitability of the numerical tools to study residence time was assessed. Velocity magnitude, pressure  contours & vectors  shows flow characteristics that help to understand and verify the main vortex structures found by CFD leading to the conclusion that the implemented CFD strategies is suitable for evaluation and design of skimmer tanks with long residence time.