Regular Article
A numerical investigation on a capsule-intake of the electrical submersible pump in skid
1
Laboratory of Simulation and Modeling on Energy Engineering, Federal University of ABC, Santo André, 09210-580 SP, Brazil
2
Center for Petroleum Studies, University of Campinas, Campinas, 13083-970 SP, Brazil
3
School of Mechanical Engineering of Campinas, University of Campinas, Campinas, 13083-970 SP, Brazil
* Corresponding author: a.damiani@ufabc.edu.br
Received:
29
October
2020
Accepted:
9
February
2021
The Electrical Submersible Pumping (ESP) system is one of the most commonly used artificial lift methods in the petroleum industry and one recent breakthrough in this system is enclosed in a capsule and positioned on the seabed in a skid. As it is a recent technology, with only a small amount of equipment currently in operation, there is a clear need for a greater understanding of the flow within this geometry with the objective of perfecting the design of this promising submarine boosting system. This paper presents a numerical investigation of single-phase flow within the scaled capsule-intake of an ESP system in the Skid considering a model with geometric and dynamic similarities in relation to a real equipment in operation in the Espadarte field, located in the Campos Basin, Brazil. The tridimensional and transient simulation for a case for one mass flow rate and inclination angles are investigated. While neglecting the effects of the diffuser and impeller in the system, the flow field features, axial and radial velocity profiles in the intake region were computed. The numerical results show that the flow in the intake region is dominated by the secondary flow, leading to the formation of bathtub vortex. It is expected that the vortices influence the flow pattern in the intake region, breaking the larger bubbles into smaller bubbles, making the transition from the slug flow pattern to the dispersed bubbles or bubbly pattern in which it would be more difficult to be dragged into the intake.
© A. Damiani Rocha, published by IFP Energies nouvelles, 2021
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
