Modeling of effective viscosity of crude oil/ water flow within esp and pipelines

• Grant number: 24/22583-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: March 01, 2025
• End date: January 31, 2029
• Field of knowledge: Engineering - Mechanical Engineering - Transport Phenomena
• Principal Investigator: Marcelo Souza de Castro
• Grantee: Matheus Henrique Cavalheiro Garros
• Host Institution: Centro de Estudos de Energia e Petróleo (CEPETRO). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Company: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Faculdade de Engenharia Mecânica (FEM)
• Associated research grant: 17/15736-3 - Engineering Research Centre in Reservoir and Production Management, AP.PCPE

Abstract

The impact of crude oil/water emulsion flows on production and processing system istaking attention due to increment of the energy consumption and, consequently, CO 2 emissonsat offshore production. This kind of flow pattern is formed when two immiscible fluids passthrough shearing equipment, such as pumps and valves. The emulsion effective viscosity canbe higher than the oil viscosity and can be affected by oil and water composition, surfactantpresence, temperature, shear rate, etc. Therefore, this flow arrangement generally leads to anincrement in energy consumption during its transportation. In this regard, many researchers(Brinkman, 1952; Derkach, 2009; Pal, 1998; Plasencia et al., 2021; Zhang et al., 2019) havebeen investigating the complex rheological behavior of the emulsions and the impact on itstransportation in pipelines and passing through pumping system, such as Electrical SubmersiblePump (ESP) (Bulgarelli et al., 2021, 2022). Therefore, the prediction of the energy consumptionon emulsion transportation in the energy industry is still precarious due to effective viscositymodel vagueness.Although there are experimental studies on emulsion effective viscosity in pipelines, theimpact of ESP shear effect on crude oil/water emulsion rheological behavior was notinvestigated yet. Furthermore, the better predition of the emulsion effective viscosity withinESP for crude oil/water emulsion is necessary to estimate adequadaly the energy comsuntion ofthis equipment. In this context, this work arises from the need to propose or improve a model ofthe emulsion effective viscosity within ESP and pipelines taking into account the rheologicalbehavior through experimental analysis.The proposed study is a phenomenological models for emulsion effective viscosity andits implementation in a numerical tool that gathers data from studies that will be performed inthe laboratory, in order to assist in the estimation of the energy consumption during emulsiontransportation.