Impact pressure distribution in flat fan nozzles for descaling oil wells

Abbas, AJ; Nasr, GG; Nourian, A; Enyi, GC

Abstract

The suitability of high pressure nozzles in terms of impact upon targeted surfaces has indicated its effectiveness for the
cleaning of oil production tubing scale, which has recently attracted wider industrial applications considering its efficiency, ease of
operation and cost benefit. In the oil and gas production, these nozzles are now used for cleaning the scale deposits along the
production tubing resulted mainly from salt crystallization due to pressure and temperature drop. Detailed characterizations of
flat-fan nozzle in terms of droplet sizes and mean velocities will benefit momentum computations for the axial and radial distribution
along the spray width, with the view of finding the best stand-off distance between the target scale and the spray nozzle. While the
droplet sizes and the velocities determine the momentum at impact, measuring droplet sizes has been known to be difficult especially
in the high density spray region, still laboratory characterization of nozzles provides a reliable data especially avoiding uncontrollable
parameters. While several researches consider break up insensitive to the cleaning performance, this research investigates the
experimental data obtained using PDA (phase doppler anemometry) which led to established variation in momentum across the spray
width thus, non-uniformity of impact distribution. Comparative model was then developed using Ansys Fluent code, which verifies
the eroded surfaces of material using the flat-fan atomizer to have shown variability in the extent of impact actions due to kinetic
energy difference between the center and edge droplets. The study’s findings could be useful in establishing the effect of droplet
kinetic energies based on the spray penetration, and will also add significant understanding to the effect of the ligaments and droplets,
along the spray penetration in order to ascertain their momentum impact distribution along the targeted surface.

Citation

Abbas, A., Nasr, G., Nourian, A., & Enyi, G. (2016). Impact pressure distribution in flat fan nozzles for descaling oil wells. Journal of Energy and Power Engineering, 10(6), 352-357. https://doi.org/10.17265/1934-8975/2016.06.003

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 9, 2016
• Publication Date: Jun 30, 2016
• Deposit Date: Feb 10, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 10, 2021
• Journal: Journal of Energy and Power Engineering
• Print ISSN: 1934-8975
• Electronic ISSN: 1934-8983
• Publisher: David Publishing
• Volume: 10
• Issue: 6
• Pages: 352-357
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.17265/1934-8975/2016.06.003
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.17265/1934-8975/2016.06.003
• Related Public URLs: http://www.davidpublisher.com/Home/Journal/JEPE
• Additional Information: Funders : Spray Research Group (SRG), University of Salford;Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF), Nigeria