Analysis of high pressure tests on wet gas flow metering with a Venturi meter

This work deals with the flow metering of wet gas issued from high pressure natural reservoirs. Some recent results obtained from tests performed on the CEESI facilities are presented. They are performed at 75 bar with 0.6 beta ratio Venturi meter installed in horizontal pipe configuration. Correction factors obtained are compared to predictions deduced from the flow modelling inside of the meter. These results are analysed in order to explain the agreements or disagreements obtained between the experiments and the flow modelling.     

Wet gas metering with a horizontally mounted Venturi meter

Wet gas metering is becoming an increasingly important problem to the Oil and Gas Industry. The Venturi meter is a favoured device for the metering of the unprocessed wet natural gas production flows. Wet gas is defined here as a two-phase flow with up to 50% of the mass flowing being in the liquid phase. Metering the gas flowrate in a wet gas flow with use of a Venturi meter requires a correction of the meter reading to account for the liquids effect. Currently, most correlations in existence were created for Orifice Plate Meters and are for general two-phase flow. However, due to no Venturi meter correlation being published before 1997 industry was traditionally forced to use these Orifice Plate Meter correlations when faced with a Venturi metering wet gas flows. This paper lists seven correlations, two recent wet gas Venturi correlations and five older Orifice Plate general two-phase flow correlations and compares their performance with new independent data from the NEL Wet Gas Loop with an ISA Controls Ltd. Standard specification six inch Venturi meter of 0.55 beta ratio installed. Finally, a new correlation is offered.     

A CFD study of low pressure wet gas metering using slotted orifice meters

Wet gas metering is becoming an increasingly important problem to many industries, in particular the oil and gas industry. Extensive studies have been done in the past on Venturi and standard orifice differential pressure (DP) flow meters to tackle wet gas flow problems. However in recent years, the slotted orifice flow meter has been developed in the attempt to improve the performance of the standard orifice meter. The novel flow meter is shown to be insensitive to the upstream flow profile with lower head loss and faster pressure recovery. This paper describes the numerical studies to establish the effect of different geometrical perforations on the performance of the slotted orifice. Three sets of slotted orifices with varying aspect ratios (1.5≤l/w≤3.0), of rectangular perforations and one slotted orifice with a circular perforation and a β ratio of 0.40 are simulated in a 1.6 m horizontal pipe using the k-ε turbulence model over a range of parameters, i.e. gas volume fraction (GVF) and gas mass flow rate. The commercial CFD code, FLUENT 6.3 was used to model the wet gas flow. Simulation results revealed that the shape of the perforation has no effect on the differential pressure, However, a marginally better pressure recovery was observed with rectangular perforations of l/w=3.0. The relatively higher over-reading values obtained in this work are consistent with the results of Geng et al. (2006) [1] that for a slotted orifice, a low β ratio is more sensitive to the liquid presence in the stream and hence is preferable for wet gas metering. Mass flow prediction by wet gas correlations showed that the homogeneous model, Steven’s and De Leeuw’s correlations had the best performance, with a calculated mean error of 4%-5%.     

Horizontally installed cone differential pressure meter wet gas flow performance

Differential pressure (DP) meters which utilise a cone as the system’s primary element are increasingly being used to measure wet natural gas flows (i.e. mixtures of natural gas, light hydrocarbon liquids and water). It is therefore important to understand this meter’s response to wet natural gas flows. Research into the wet gas response of the horizontally installed cone DP meter is discussed in this paper. Consideration is given to the significant influence of the liquid properties on wet gas flow patterns and the corresponding influence of the flow pattern on the cone DP meter’s liquid phase induced gas flow rate prediction error. A wet natural gas flow correlation for 4 in. 0.75 beta ratio cone DP meters with natural gas, hydrocarbon liquid and water flow has been developed from multiple data sets from three different wet gas flow test facilities. This corrects the liquid induced gas flow rate prediction error of a wet gas flow up to a Lockhart–Martinelli parameter of 0.3, for a known liquid flow rate of any hydrocarbon liquid/water ratio, to ±4% at a 95% confidence level.     

Wet gas overreading characteristics of a long-throat Venturi at high pressure based on CFD

Based on the operational conditions of the PetroChina Southwest Oil & Gas well field, this study aims to explore the wet gas flow overreading (OR) characteristics of a nonstandard long-throat Venturi by the means of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technique. The studied prototype structure size is an inner diameter of 50 mm, a diameter ratio of 0.4 and a throat length of 50 mm. According to the field experiment, the simulation pressure is 3 MPa gauge. Through a comparative study of the multiphase flow models and turbulence models, combined with the analysis of the Baker׳s flow regime and interparticle space under the field conditions, this paper eventually employed DPM model and Eulerian model for wet gas simulation, respectively, and RSM for turbulence model. An equivalent droplet diameter adjustment method was implemented to improve the precision of prediction. During post-processing, the liquid phase distributions and the wall pressure profiles were investigated. The numerical results indicate that the differential pressure in convergent section of long-throat Venturi by using DPM model is less than that by using Eulerian model, and the differential pressures in the divergent section by using the two models are analogous. Afterwards, the OR prediction correlations based on the differential pressure ratio method were proposed, and then compared and validated by the industrial field tests. The root mean square errors (RMSE) and the average relative errors predicted by Eulerian model were 4.24% and 3.78%, 5.69% and 5.01% by using DPM model, respectively. In conclusion, Eulerian model is more suitable for wet gas flow prediction. And some advice on the improvement of the multiphase flow simulation is provided to get a more preferable performance in wet gas flow prediction.     

内文丘里管流量计

本文介绍了一种集经典文丘里管、环形孔板和耐磨孔板计量性能成于一体的新型差压装置－－内文丘里管,对这种差压装置的结构、测量原理、技术性能、适用范围、可膨胀性系数的确定方法以及内文丘里管优异计量性能形成的机理作了简要的论述,同时还展望了该种差压装置有望取代孔板等传统差压装置的广泛应用与良好发展前景。     

Experimental analysis of the behaviour of a Venturi meter submitted to an upstream air/oil annular liquid film

The aim of this work is to study the response of a Venturi meter submitted to an annular two phase flow where the liquid phase contains simultaneously water and oil. After a literature survey on the oil/water/gas flow in pipes, this paper presents the results of an experimental analysis performed at low pressure on a vertical downward pipe configuration. In a first step the structure of the liquid film is described from visual observations using high speed video records. Relationship between the two liquids inside of the film structure is enhanced. Inversion phenomena described in the literature are observed for given fraction of water in the liquid phase (known as the water cut). In a second step, the analysis of the atomisation of the liquid inside of the Venturi meter is presented. No preferential atomisation of one of the two liquid is observed. The results obtained clearly show the influence of the water cut on the atomisation rate and confirm the influence of the inversion phenomenon. They also indicate the link between the atomisation process and the deviation in the gas mass flow rate deduced from differential pressure measurements.     

水平安装文丘里管低压湿气测量模型

在低压高流速工况下,对文丘里管的湿气测量虚高数学模型进行理论和试验研究.由动量方程出发,推导文丘里管用于湿气测量的理论计算式.在天津大学低压油、气、水三相流试验装置上,对管径比为0.404 8、0.55、0.7的文丘里管进行大量湿气试验,分析压力、滑差及液相含率对文丘里湿气测量虚高的影响,提出一个新的文丘里管低压湿气测量半经验模型公式,达到较高的测量精度.通过对不同管径比的试验数据的分析比较,得出管径比为0.55的文丘里管信号具有较小分散性的结论.     

Experimental and numerical investigation on the performance of small-sized cavitating venturis

Cavitating venturis (CVs) are simple devices which can be used in different industrial applications to passively control the flow rate of fluids. In this research the operation of small-sized CVs is characterized and their capabilities in regulating the mass flow rate were experimentally and numerically investigated. The effect of upstream and downstream pressures, as well as geometrical parameters such as the throat diameter, throat length, and diffuser angle on the mass flow rate and critical pressure ratio were studied. For experimental data acquisition, three CVs with throat diameters of 0.7, 1 and 1.5 mm were manufactured and tested. The fabricated CVs were tested at different upstream and downstream pressures in order to measure their output mass flow rate and to obtain their characteristic curves. The flow inside the CVs was also simulated by computational fluid dynamics. The numerical results showed agreement with the experimental data by a maximum deviation of 5–10% and confirmed that the numerical approach can be used to predict the critical pressure ratio and mass flow rate at cavitaing condition. It is found that despite the small size of venturis, they are capable of controlling the mass flow rate and exhibit the normal characteristics. By decreasing the throat diameter, their cavitating mode became more limited. Results also show that increasing the diffuser angle and throat length leads to a decrease in critical pressure ratio.     

New criteria for the experimental validation of CFD simulations

As CFD methods are still not perfect, they usually need experimental validation. Difficulties have been encountered during the experimental validation of CFD calculation results in quantitatively assessing the consistency between experiments and numerical simulations. It seems that existing criteria are only suitable for the comparison of experiments of the same type, thus, experiments vs. experiments or simulations vs. simulations. New criteria enabling the quantitative comparison of measurement results with computational results have been proposed. The criteria have proven to be very useful for the validation of CFD calculations of a high pressure gas meter calibration facility.     

Study on wet gas online flow rate measurement based on dual slotted orifice plate

According to the current technical problems existing in gas and liquid flow measurement for wet gas production, the slotted orifice-couple flow meter was developed and the basic measurement principles for gas and liquid flow was presented. A new wet gas flow meter was developed based on the dual slotted orifice transducer. The flow characteristics of liquid flow through dual slotted orifice plate, the relationship of differential pressure between the dual slotted orifice plate, pressure, temperature, and flow rate of gas/liquid of different aperture ratio were studied. A mathematical measurement model was established to be applied in the flow meter measurement system with dual slotted orifice plate. The model was tested and calibrated by on-site field experiments in the China National Center of Metrology at Daqing Oil field. The results showed that the maximum measurement error of the gas and liquid flow was less than 10% and 15% respectively, when the Gas Volume Fraction (GVF) was greater than 90 vol%. The measurement accuracy of this industrial prototype can meet the requirements of well fluids.     

An ultra high-pressure test rig for measurements of small flow rates with different viscosities

Within the framework of a research project regarding investigations on a high-pressure Coriolis mass flow meter (CMF) a portable flow test rig for traceable calibration measurements of the flow rate (mass - and volume flow) in a range of 5 g min⁻¹ to 500 g min⁻¹ and in a pressure range of 0.1 MPa to 85 MPa was developed. The measurement principle of the flow test rig is based on the gravimetrical measuring procedure with flying-start-and-stop operating mode. Particular attention has been paid to the challenges of temperature stability during the measurements since the temperature has a direct influence on the viscosity and flow rate of the test medium. For that reason the pipes on the high-pressure side are double-walled and insulated and the device under test (DUT) has an enclosure with a separate temperature control. From the analysis of the first measurement with tap water at a temperature of 20 °C and a pressure of 82.7 MPa an extensive uncertainty analysis has been carried out. It was found that the diverter (mainly due to its asymmetric behaviour) is the largest influence factor on the total uncertainty budget. After a number of improvements, especially concerning the diverter, the flow test rig has currently an expanded measurement uncertainty of around 1.0% in the lower flow rate range (25 g min⁻¹) and 0.25% in the higher flow rate range (400 g min⁻¹) for the measurement of mass flow. Additional calibration measurements with the new, redesigned flow test rig and highly viscous base oils also indicated a good agreement with the theoretical behaviour of the flow meter according to the manufacturers׳ specifications with water as test medium. Further improvements are envisaged in the future in order to focus also on other areas of interest.