Vacuum Degasser for Mud Gas Separation System under Various Suction Pressure

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Authored by

Muhammad Abi Rizky, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Indonesia

Synopsis

In the oil and gas industry, the use of circulating fluid is essential to ensure the hole is clean from the rock cuttings, as well as to provide cooling to the heavily used BHA systems. To ensure the performance of the drilling mud, it has to be conditioned properly on the surface by cleaning it from cuttings with a mud filter, as well as separating the gas contained from the mud using a degasser system. H2S gas contained within the rock formation comes from the fluids in HPHT wells which when unfiltered from the mud, may corrode the downhole tools. In the industry, there are many types of degasser used, such as horizontal flow degasser, vertical flow degasser, as well as vacuum degassers. By using the vacuum degassers, the gas outlet is pulled by the pressure differential, while the drilling fluid flows down due to gravity from the horizontal inlet. The goal of this study is to recreate the system using CFD, and by creating variations of the pressure outlet for the gas, determining the optimum pressure differential so the gas can be pulled effectively from the mud while remain power efficient.

Abstract

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1. Introduction

In an oil drilling operation, drilling fluids, also known as drilling muds is used to clean the borehole by lifting the rock cuttings to the surface. As the fluid flows from downhole towards the surface, the rock formation surrounding it may exert gases known as formation fluids, which contains H2S in gaseous phase. The gas then flows towards the surface alongside the drilling mud, and this multiphase flow will cause the contained H2S gas to form bubbles within the mud flow. These bubbles may cause severe damages towards all kinds of systems used in the operation, such as the centrifugal pumps used to recirculate the mud downhole, downhole drilling motors used in directional drilling, as well as the drill bits, as the acidic nature of the gas may cause failures to these tools. And as such, the use of mud gas separator becomes essential in the industry.

The mud gas separator system is used to separate the gas from the drilling mud, as the name implies. There are two main types of degassers used in the industry; the vacuum degasser and the atmospheric degasser. Vacuum degassers use a combination of turbulent flow and reduced internal tank pressure to move gas-cut drilling fluid and release gas bubbles, while an atmospheric degasser uses a submerged centrifugal pump to spray the drilling mud in a thin sheet of drilling fluid against the wall of a tank. This study will be focused on analyzing the vacuum degassser using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method.

Figure 1 Vacuum Degasser

The vacuum degasser systems use vacuum pumps to extract the H2S gas bubbles from the drilling fluid. These vacuum pumps are used to suck in the gas within the degasser's tank, while the drilling fluid flows downwards due to gravity. The gas contained within the drilling fluid is not to flow downwards alongside the drilling mud, which is why the suction pessure of the vacuum pump has to be optimized. The suction pressure has to be enough to suck in the gas from within the bubble, while utilizing as minimum power as possible, and as such, the variation of suction pressure of the gas outlet is studied.

Objectives

This work aims to simulate using CFD to analyze the effect of geometrical parameters to its flow pattern and characteristics. In more detail, the research objectives are as follows:

1) To analyze the variation of suction pressure against the time it takes for the gas to separate from the mud;

2) To analyze the possible geometrical optimizations gained from the flow patterns, such as by observing pressure drops, wakes, or other fluid dynamical phenomenona which may occur within the degasser;

3) To analyze the possible developments of the degassers based on the numerical simulation results;

The following chapters after this introduction will be structured as follows: 1) methodology, which explains about the fluid model and parameters, software utilized in this research, and computational method; 2) Results and discussion; and 3) Conclusion.

2. Methodology

This chapter outlines the methodology chosen for this work. The model assumption and verification will discuss the theory that will be the basis on model assumption, flow parameters, and boundary condition.

2.1 Geometrical Model

The geometry used for this study is the vacuum degasser, however the overall design is simpliefied to have no inside pipe. The overall diameter of the tank is set to be 1400 mm, the mud and gas inlet is set to be 400 mm, then the gas outlet at 200 mm, and mud outlet at 500 mm. The dimensions are set in such a way that the volume flow rate ratio of gas and mud are roughly 2:5 at their respective outlets.

2.2 Parameters to be Analyzed

In this study, the independent variable is the outlet suction pressure for the H2S gas, while the dependent variabkle is the time it takes for the given gas to exist the system through the said outlet. The suction pressure is going to be set at atmospheric pressure, then varied down in 1 kPa increments to around 95 kPa of absolute pressure within the gas outlet.

2.3 Fluid Properties

The fluids used in this project are water-based drilling fluid of 0.5% starch which has density of 10450 kg/m^3, and dynamic viscosity of 0.001 Pa.s and H2S under atmosepheric condition which has mass density of 1.36 kg/m^3 and dynamic viscosity of 0.00012 Pa.s.

2.4 Simulation Model

The simulation for this study is going to be set to be transient (0.001 s of delta t), incompressible, subsonic, multiphase with volume of fluid (VOF) method, and turbulent with LES, includes gravity forces, and set to be isothermal. The inlet will contain both mud and gas in a mixture, set to flow at 0.1 kg/s. The mud and gas will have different outlet which shows their separation from one another, under various suction pressure.

2.3 Software Description

The geometrical model for this study uses SolidWorks. Then the research will utilize CFDSOF, a CFD software developed by CCIT Group. CFDSOF has been widely used, especially in Indonesia, by several universities and state-owned enterprises projects. The mesh generation and CFD simulation is conducted using CFDSOF. The result is then post-processed and presented using Paraview.

3. Results and Discussion

4. Conclusion

Acknowledgement

This research was conducted as a final project for the Computational Fluid Dynamics course, in Mechanical Engineering Department, Universitas Indonesia. The author thank Dr. Ahmad Indra as our advisor, and also Bang Edo, Bang Bani, Ales, Bintang, Elvin, Mas Agus, and all other students for the valuable discussion in creating this research paper.

References