An ever increasing quantity of gas and oil is produced from offshore. As a consequence, greater efforts are put into the corresponding facility designs. The majority of gas/liquid separations employed by the oil industry have been based on gravity settling and demisting meshes. The gravity separators are usually large and heavy vessels, which are expensive for offshore/subsea applications. On the other hand, demisting mats exhibits relatively high performance in droplet removal. However, for some conditions they are not appropriate, such as high liquid loading, foam tendency or impurity conditions, because the cost of intervention in offshore is extremely high. Therefore, the need of exploiting offshore oil reserves and cutting down equipment costs becomes the motivation of researching new compact separation techniques.
Cyclonic type separators have simple construction, they are relatively inexpensive to fabricate and operate with moderate pressure losses. Previously the R&D activities of compact separators have almost solely focused on cyclonic type separators. The earliest study of the cyclone separator for offshore production was from the 1980s. Davies and Watson (1983) showed several advantages of using a cyclone separator instead of a conventional separator. In recently years, intensive researches have been carried out to develop compact separators with various features. As examples of compact separators, the Gas/Liquid Cylindrical Cyclone (GLCC), the Cyclone Separator (CS), the Inline separator and the Multi-pipe separator will be introduced in the following section.
2.3.1 GLCC
The GLCC was first introduced by Tulsa University and Chevron Petroleum Technology (Arpandi et al., 1996). The GLCC is a type of cyclone separator, which applies a centrifugal force to enhance the separation process. Figure 2-25 illustrates the three main parts of the GLCC: the inclined tangential inlet, the tangential liquid outlet, and the axial gas outlet. The fluids enter the separator tangentially through an inclined feed pipe. Due to density differences, the highly swirling flow forces the gas spinning downward along the GLCC inner wall, then it is forced upward in the center. Initially, GLCC was designed to provide bulk gas/liquid separation as a part of a metering system. After extensive development, the GLCCs equipped with advanced control strategy have been applied widely in oil fields.
Arpandi et al., (1996) proposed the conceptual design and applications of the GLCC. (Shoham and Kouba, 1998) reported field applications of the GLCC in relation to metering loops in Duri and Indonesia, gas knockout in China, and liquid knockout in Nigeria; the findings show that the GLCC can considerably improve metering accuracy and save significant costs. Due to the sensitivity of the designs to the flow rate, even though they are able to lead to really smaller sizes, they are rarely picked for production operations. But a GLCC is still very effective as a partial separator. In recent BC-10 and Perdido projects, as mentioned in section 2.1.2, the GLCC is deployed as the top assembly to promote the initial separation (Gruehagen and Lim, 2009).
2.3.2 Cyclone Separator (CS)
The CS was a joint development by Petrobras and the State University of Campinas (Franca et al., 1996) . The CS was primarily developed as part of a subsea boosting technology for oil production from deep-water fields. According to Franca et al., (1996), the CS can be described as a vertical case composed of three sub-separators, as shown in Figure 2-26. Primary separation occurs when the gas/liquid mixture leaves the inlet nozzle. The gas is mainly separated here. A liquid film with dispersed bubbles swirls along the inner wall due to tangential inertia, then liquid enters the helix channel, and the secondary separation happens. The gas that separates in this section flows through the existing holes into the inner pipe and then gets to the gas pipeline. The liquid and some dispersed bubbles plunge into the tertiary separator which acts as a gravitational separator for the residual gas, then directs the liquid to the pump suction line.
Figure 2-26 Schematic of the Cyclone Separator (Rosa et al., 2001)
Several research works were conducted to study the CS flow behaviours. Rosa et al., (1996) measured the thickness and flow direction of the liquid film on the chamber wall and the shape of the film cross-section in the helix channel by using electrical conductive and ultra-sound probes. Furthermore, a numerical simulation which assumes the flow is axis-symmetric was used to predict the average film quantities.
Rosa et al., (2001) tested three types of scaled-down CS models. In their study, three different liquid fluids were used during the tests with liquid viscosity from 1cP to 150 cP, at 25°C. As expected the capacity of the separator to handle the flow rate of liquid decreases as the liquid viscosity increases. They also found that the diameter of the critical gas bubble is proportional to the liquid viscosity.
2.3.3 Inline Separator
Inline separators were developed by Statoil and CDS (Schook and Asperen, 2005) . Inline separators apply cyclonic technology. Two kinds of devices exist: the Inline degasser and the Inline deliquidiser. The degasser is designed to separate the gas from the liquid dominated phase, while the deliquidiser does the opposite. Inline separators are often applied to de-bottleneck and upgrade existing facilities.
A schematic of the inline separator is shown in Figure 2-27 and Figure 2-28. The inline separators are equipped with mixing elements. The mixers are to ensure that a mixture is even distributed to avoid a stratified flow. Stationary swirl elements are placed in the downstream of mixing elements. Swirl elements create the rotational motion of the flow. Because of the differences in the density, the gas moves towards to the centre of separator chamber as the liquid spins along the chamber wall. For the degasser, the gas phase that exists the separator chamber from an annular part, which is linked to a vertical gas scrubber. In the vertical gas scrubber, the liquid phase which has been carried over will be separated and drained back to the main liquid stream. For the deliquidiser, gas is removed through a smaller pipe, which is inserted in the separator chamber. The liquid film is captured in a vertical boot part. Some gas that is trapped in the boot section is removed and injected back into device. At the downstream of inline separators, an anti-swirl element exists which can eliminate the motion of rotational flow and recovers some pressure (Schook and Asperen, 2005).
Figure 2-27 Schematic of an inline Degasser (Schook and Asperen, 2005)
As reported by Fantoft et al., (2010), the degasser and deliquidiser can achieve 90-99.5% efficiency under optimal conditions and more than 80% efficiency under challenging conditions.
2.3.4 Multi-Pipe Separator
Roberto et al., (2011) reported that Saipem had developed a Vertical Multi-Pipe Separator made of several pipes within a vertical array. As a part of a SGLSB system, the purpose of such multi-pipe design is to fully utilize pipes to offer sufficient separation and liquid holdup volumes. Comparing with the conventional separation vessel, the vertical pipes have smaller diameter and thinner wall, and they especially designed for extreme conditions such as deep or ultra-deep water.
Figure 2-29 Multi-pipe separator principle Figure 2-30 Tangential inlet distributor Roberto et al., (2011) Roberto et al., (2011)
The Vertical Multi-Pipe Separator, as illustrated in Figure 2-29, is designed similarly as a conventional vertical separator. Special designed inlet is to enhance the separation
separators. The distributor, as shown in Figure 2-30, is connected to a tangential inlet to avoid the high turbulences and smaller droplets which may generate by the splashing. The required slug handling capacity is achieved by extending the height of pipes appropriately. Separated liquids are commingled at the bottom and separated gases are collected above the pipe bundle. The separator will be included in the subsea station retrievable module.
Extensive qualification programs and validated simulations have been carried out to validate the effectiveness of the separator. According to the report of Roberto et al., (2011), under the design basis and extreme test conditions (125% of the design), the multi-pipe separator can deliver the required separation performance with the Liquid Carry Over (LCO) of less than 0.1% and Gas Carry Under (GCU) of less than 10%. Further qualification will be carried out before the multi-pipe separator can be implemented in subsea.
2.3.5 Pipe-Hi-SEP
The Pipe-Hi-SEP system developed within the present study is a type of compact cyclone separator. It achieves high efficiency separation in small diameter pipes, making the use of existing pipe code. The Pipe-Hi-SEP system was invented and patented by CALTEC Ltd (Arato et al., 2002). A Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) project was set up between CALTEC Ltd and Cranfield University to explore the SGLSB technology. Integrating the compact Pipe-Hi-SEP system in the SGLSB system will make the overall subsea structure lighter and easier to manufacture.
As shown in Figure1-1 in Chapter 1, The Pipe-Hi-SEP system is a two stage separation system, which consists of a Pipe-SEP and a Hi-SEP. The Pipe-SEP and Hi-SEP have the same configuration but different in size. The Pipe-SEP is used primarily as a pre- separator. A gas liquid separation in the Pipe-SEP is accomplished in three stages. The bulk of gas/liquid separation happens when the flow enters tangential to the Pipe-SEP. The liquid swirls as a liquid film with dispersed bubbles over the inner wall of Pipe-SEP chamber. The liquid film encounters the FER, and then loses tangential inertia along the vertical direction and drops down the liquid chamber, from which it is discharged. The next stage is the disengagement of liquid droplets, during which the droplets flow with the bulk flows of gas and move in a radial outward direction towards the wall owing to
centrifugal force. The migration and residence times of the droplets would decide whether the droplets would strike the radial wall, or leave with the gas phase. The final stage is mist elimination, during which small droplets are captured by the ASB and coalesced into larger droplets, which are separated from the gas by gravity. The liquid outlet, besides acting as a liquid level maintainer, directs the liquid to the lower inlet of Hi-SEP. The entrained gas bubble in the liquid chamber of Pipe-SEP will be separated in the Hi-SEP, where the gas bubble moves towards the centre of the Hi-SEP and emerges at the gas/liquid interface. The gas that separated in the Pipe-SEP flows through the existing outlet into the upper part of Hi-SEP where the gas with entrained liquid droplets is separated.
The Hi-SEP has similar features as the Pipe-SEP. Due to the existence of Pipe-SEP, it makes the separation in the Hi-SEP much easier. The overall performance of Pipe-Hi- SEP depends on the performance of each separator.