Abstract
Solid particle erosion has been long recognized as a potential problem in oil and gas production systems. Knowledge of the relationship between the gas-liquid flow pattern and the severity of erosion due to produced sand can improve the design of two-phase flow systems. This study focuses on describing the complexity in experimental data that has been gathered for validation and improvement of mechanistic models that are being developed to predict erosion rates under annular flow and intermittent flow conditions in vertical and horizontal flow conditions. Experimental data has been collected in churn, pseudo-slug, and annular flow conditions while varying the superficial liquid and gas velocities. Erosion data has been obtained with state-of-the-art temperature compensated multiple UT transducers. Flow measurements are conducted with the aid of dual Wire Mesh Sensors (WMS). The dual WMS are utilized to measure void fraction distributions of the flow patterns upstream of elbows in vertical and horizontal pipe sections. Differences in flow patterns between the horizontal and vertical orientations can cause erosion rates to be different by a factor of as large as 8 for certain flow conditions. The differences in erosion rates are higher for medium liquid rate conditions than low-liquid rates.
