Modeling of Water Wetting in Oil-Water Pipe Flow

Abstract

Abstract Internal CO2 corrosion in crude oil transport pipelines is always associated with the presence of “free” water, and the likelihood of corrosion generally increases with the volume fraction of the water phase. A recently developed method is applied here to predict the critical velocity for entraining the water by the flowing oil phase. Entrainment of the water eventually eliminates the corrosion problem. The effects of pipe diameter, surface tension, oil viscosity and density on the critical velocity for water entrainment are discussed in detail in this paper. On the other side, if all the water is not entrained by the flowing oil phase, it is important to predict the thickness of the water film, the in-situ: water cut, film velocity and wetted area. A new model is proposed here that can be used to calculate these parameters, which are crucial for corrosion prediction in multiphase flow. A comparison is carried out between this new model and experiments conducted in large diameter horizontal pipe flow.