Computers & Fluids 99 (2014) 104115

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Computers & Fluids

j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w . e l s e v i e r . c o m / l o c a t e / c o m p fl u i d

Study on hydrodynamic slug ow mitigation with wavy pipe

using a 3D1D coupling approach
Lanchang Xing a,b,, Hoi Yeung b, Yanfeng Geng a, Yi Cao b, Joseph Shen c
a

College of Information and Control Engineering, China University of Petroleum, Qingdao 266580, China
Process Systems Engineering Group, School of Engineering, Craneld University, Bedfordshire MK43 0AL, United Kingdom
c
Chevron Energy Technology Company, Houston, TX 77002, United States
b

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 16 December 2012
Received in revised form 30 August 2013
Accepted 22 April 2014
Available online 2 May 2014
Keywords:
Hydrodynamic slug ow
3D1D coupling
CFD
STAROLGA coupling
Slug mitigation
Wavy pipe

a b s t r a c t
Objective: A wavy pipe, constructed by connecting standard piping bends in series in one plane, was proposed to mitigate hydrodynamic slug ows in horizontal pipelines.
Methods: A newly developed 3D1D co-simulation method, i.e. STAROLGA coupling, was applied to
model the wavy-pipe systems experiencing hydrodynamic slug ows. The ow characteristics of slug
ow in the wavy-pipe systems were investigated, through which the effectiveness of the wavy pipe on
slug mitigation and how the geometrical parameters of the wavy pipe affecting its performance were
examined.
Results: It has been found that the upstream liquid slug degenerates into a liquid dense zone of a
greater length downstream of the wavy pipe due to the gas penetration into the slug body. A reduction
of the effective density of the liquid dense zone from that of the upstream slug body is resultant showing
the effectiveness of the wavy pipe on mitigating the adverse impacts of slug ow. The amount of gas penetration increases then decreases with the increasing wavy-pipe amplitude indicating that excessively
higher amplitude is even less effective on introducing the gas phase into the slug body. Differently a wavy
pipe with the same amplitude but a greater length, i.e. more bends, is more effective.
Conclusions: It is concluded that the wavy pipe works by reducing the effective density of the liquid slug
through introducing the gas phase into the slug body in the push-out process in each bend of the wavy
pipe and the geometrical parameters need to be designed properly in specic applications.
2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Gas/liquid slug ow is frequently encountered during the transportation of oil and gas in pipelines. There is usually a signicant
length of multiphase owline upstream of the processing facilities
in the offshore production systems and it often happens that signicant gas surges and liquid slugs are generated in the owline.
The liquid slugs generated in oil and gas multiphase owlines
can be classied into three different types based on their initiation
mechanisms [1,2]:
 Terrain-induced slugs: caused by periodic accumulation and
purging of liquid in elevation changes along the owline, particularly at low owrates.

Corresponding author at: College of Information and Control Engineering, China

University of Petroleum, Qingdao 266580, China. Tel.: +86 18561597851.
E-mail addresses: l.xing@yahoo.com, xinglc@upc.edu.cn (L. Xing).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compuid.2014.04.023
0045-7930/ 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

 Hydrodynamic slugs: formed due to wave instabilities at the gas/

liquid interface and grow or shrink depending on the owline
topography.
 Operation-induced slugs: formed in the system during the operation transfer between steady state and transient state such as
start-up or pigging operations.
The terrain-induced slugs mainly include hilly-terrain-induced
slugs and riser-induced slugs. The corresponding ow regimes
are hilly-terrain-induced slugging and riser-induced slugging,
respectively. The riser-induced slugging is often called severe
slugging, while the ow regime corresponding to the hydrodynamic slugs is called hydrodynamic slug ow. All the three types
of slugs may be encountered in a multiphase owline during the
life span of a production well. At the early and late stages of production terrain-induced slugs may form due to the low gas and
liquid owrates, while hydrodynamic slugs may appear at the middle stage and operation-induced slugs may be induced by the startup and regular pigging operations throughout the life span.

L. Xing et al. / Computers & Fluids 99 (2014) 104115

Slug mitigation has become one of the most challenging topics

of ow assurance in oil and gas production systems [36]. For
severe slugging in pipeline/riser systems the fast moving liquid
slugs of great lengths and violent gas surges may cause serious
problems to the production system, such as ooding of downstream processing facilities, severe pipe corrosion and structural
instability of the pipeline, production loss and poor reservoir management [7,8]. Vzquez and Fairuzov [9] conducted a theoretical
and experimental study to investigate the effects of the riser on
the dynamics of the hydrodynamic slugs longer than the riser. A
transient mechanistic model was developed and then used to simulate the hydrodynamic slug ow in an offshore production system
with a large-diameter pipeline of 36 in. It was found that the long
slugs can accelerate in the riser to a velocity of ve times greater
than the average slug velocity in the pipeline. Therefore, hydrodynamic slugs in pipeline/riser systems can be as problematic as
those in severe slugging due to their great lengths and high
velocities.
The major methods for mitigating severe slugging in the literature can be grouped into two categories: Active and passive slug
mitigation, based on whether the external interference is needed
or not in the operation [10]. An external interference is essential to
the implementation of the active methods [1115]. The passive
methods usually take the form of design changes to the facility
itself such as sizing of slug catcher, gas lifting by rerouting the
gas in the pipeline to the riser [7] and ow regime modication
by a ow conditioner in the pipeline [16,17]. The function of the
passive methods can be achieved without any external interference. A new ow conditioner, a wavy pipe layout, was proposed
to modify the stratied ow in the pipeline so as to mitigate severe
slugging in pipeline/riser systems. The performance and working
principle of the wavy pipe on severe slugging mitigation such as
reducing the severe slugging region and severity of the resultant
problems to the production systems have been investigated experimentally and numerically [8,10,18].
In the work reported in this paper the newly developed wavy
pipe layout previously used for severe slugging mitigation was
applied to hydrodynamic slug ow in horizontal pipelines. The
effectiveness of the wavy pipe on mitigating hydrodynamic slug
ow and the effects of the wavy-pipe geometrical parameters were
investigated through numerical modelling and experiment. It is
still a challenge to predict the slug ow characteristics accurately
for a wide range of pipeline congurations and ow conditions

105

with models. OLGA is one of the multiphase ow simulation codes

widely used in the oil and gas industry [19]. Essentially OLGA is a
transient one-dimensional (1D) modied two-uid model [20,21].
The slug tracking model in OLGA is capable of predicting the characteristic parameters of slug ow such as slug length, liquid holdup
in the slug body and void fraction in the elongated bubble region.
However, OLGA models cannot provide details of the phase distribution in the pipeline. CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) plays
an important role in exploring the underlying physics and ow
characteristics of the multiple phases in multiphase ow because
the ow eld in the two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional
(3D) spaces can be exhibited [2224]. However, CFD models are
computationally expensive to obtain the time dependent solutions
for slug ows in long pipelines. It is an interesting idea to make the
most of the advantages of the 1D and 3D models for achieving a
tradeoff between the computation speed and details of the model
solutions. Recently, a 3D1D modelling method, CFDOLGA coupling, has been developed and validated with a case study on slug
ow induced forces on pipe bends [25,26]. In this work the wavypipe system experiencing hydrodynamic slug ows were modelled
with the CFDOLGA coupling method. In the coupling model the
wavy pipe was modelled with a 3D CFD code, STAR-CCM+ [25],
while the upstream and downstream pipelines were modelled
with a 1D code OLGA [19]. The ow characteristics in the wavy
pipe, upstream and downstream were presented by the 3D model,
through which the effects of the wavy-pipe geometrical parameters were examined. This study lays a foundation for understanding the underlying physics of hydrodynamic slug ows in wavy
pipes and for designing wavy pipes to mitigate the adverse impacts
of hydrodynamic slug ows.

2. Experimental setup
2.1. Geometry of wavy pipe
A wavy pipe is a pipe section constructed by connecting a series
of standard piping bends in one plane. The elementary unit in a
wavy pipe is one piping bend, which can be described with three
geometrical parameters, i.e. the internal diameter of the tube (d),
the bend radius (R) and the bend angle (a) as shown in Fig. 1(a).
Different geometries can be created by joining several bends
together in different manners. Four 90 bends connecting together

(c) Wavy pipe with 5 bends

Fig. 1. Piping bend, doughnut geometry and wavy pipe.

ID
761937

Title
Study on hydrodynamic slug flow mitigation with wavy pipe using a 3D1D coupling approach

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