Mixing | - Mixing is a basic unit operation in chemical and hydrocarbon processing, yet it is very complex and there are many parameters affecting “good mixing”
- Selection of the right vessel geometry, type and related internals (shafts, baffles, coils, etc.)
- Operating condition, selection of feed location, impeller speed, scale up
- Blending, reacting and suspending of multi-component and multi-phase material
- Optimizing yield, reduce power input and process time
| - Detailed results offer better understanding of mixing in single and multiphase flows (including heat and mass transfer)
- Perform blending, mixing and residence time calculations
- Optimize vessel geometry and select the right internals, sparger, dip tube and feed location, impeller speed
- Calculate forces on impellers
- Perform steady state or dynamic stress and thermal analysis
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Particulate Flows | - Create more final products through particulate formation
- Control particle size and thus final product quality
- Design of catalytic particulate (controlling particle attrition)
- Design of efficient particle separation, classification and collection equipment
- Fines capture and removal
- Particle entrainment (environmental concerns)
- Fluidization and fluidized bed reactors
- Gasification of biomass and coal particles
| - Gas-solid hydrodynamics that provide insight into particle residence time, particle concentration, erosion, and separation
- Heat and mass transfer studies involving homogenous and heterogeneous reactions
- Effect of internals, including short-circuiting, flow distribution
- Design and optimization of separators, filters, and other solid handling devices
- Novel reactor design and scale up studies
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Sloshing Separator Tank Design | - Increased requirements in overboard water discharge
- Continued interest in designing smaller and more efficient separator (size and weight concerns)
- Increase range of operability
- Account for wave induced motion of FPSO and offshore platforms
| - Estimate the hydrodynamic forces caused by sloshing in 6 degrees of freedom
- Evaluate damping and performance of internals such as baffles and coalescers
- Optimize the shape and location of inlets and outlets, and performance of any upstream gas separators
- Design for fatigue and structural stresses on vessel (pressure vessel codes), the supports and the internals
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Liquid-Liquid Separator Tank Design | - Increased need for highly polished discharged products
- Design for performance, weight, operating cost, reliability across a range throughput
- Complex flows including coalescence and breakup multi-phases
- Structural integrity and reliability
| - Account of multiphase flow and its behavior in different parts of the separator
- Include effect of particle size distribution, coalescence and breakup using population balance
- Optimize design and placement of internals including baffles, pores and packed sections, and size and location of inlets and outlets
- Provide insight for design of separator sections including sizing, pressure drop analysis and overall performance
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Hydrocyclones | - Design separators to operate at wider cut ranges
- De-oiling water and dewatering oil at much higher rates
- Performance highly sensitive to:
- Geometrical shape and vortex core stability
- Concentrations and droplet size
| - Design inlet configuration and geometry for high angular velocity
- Evaluate separation efficiency for different oil to water and water to oil mixtures
- Optimize placement of vortex finder
- Develop multi-stage or collection of separators
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Cyclones | - Increased sand and particulate in many production lines
- Separator design for possible downhole application
- Continuous need for improvement in collection efficiency and increase throughput
- Wide range of applicability and the associated need to design separators to operate for a broad range of particle sizes
- Scale up and/or connecting in a series
| - Optimize inlet design to reduce erosion, increase efficiency and find the range of device’s usability
- Geometry and design optimization for various particle loading in 2-phase and 3-phase applications
- Relevant to many applications and any separator shapes, accounting for:
- particles mass, diameter and loading
- flow characteristics and pressure drop
- welding, structural stress fabrication and erosion
- performance in stages or in an assembly
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Valves, Chocks, Regulators | - Design products that work reliably in harsh environments and for complex applications
- Concerns about erosion, cavitation, throughput, leakage, pressure drop, dynamic response, flow uniformity
- Thermal and structural stresses
- Controls, electronic devices and sensors sometimes used with these devices
- Manufacturing processes and cost
| - Applicable to design, analysis, production and operation of these types of devices
- Ability to engineer the entire system using full range of multiphysics capabilities
- Understand structural and thermal stresses to increase reliability and safety
- Predict erosion spots and design to reduce its impact
- Design to minimize cavitation
- Improve pressure drop and the range of the equipment operability
- Accelerate design by performing parametric and design optimization
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Heat Exchangers | - Heat exchanger efficiency
- Avoid fouling, maldistribution
- Sizing and type selection
- Thermal and structural design
- Fabrication and manufacturing practices
| - Design to code using ASME pressure vessel tools and analysis
- Retrofit exciting devices for process improvement and efficiency
- Look at flow and heat transfer to design around dead or hot spots
- Design tubes, baffles and heat exchangers geometry to meet overall process objectives
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Induced Gas Flotation (IGF) System | - Major design challenge because of high level of separation in a single cell vertical column induced gas floatation (IGF) system
- Tightened regulations and heightened concerns about produced water has resulted in requirements to purify water to less than 20 parts per million of total oil content
- Develop and inject fine gas bubbles (100 to 500 microns) into the vessel with contaminated water
- Save weight and space on offshore platforms
- Generally time consuming and expensive to perform conventional physical testing
| - Simulate existing standard eductors used in gas flotation devices to understand why they do not work for this purpose
- Help design experiments to validate the concerns
- Design new gas distributor and perform detailed studies to observe their effectiveness
- Account of multiphase flow and its behavior in different parts of the IGF
- Reduce prototyping and product development by better understanding problem areas
- Sample client case: New injector and baffling system created well-distributed gas bubbles and eliminated undesired recirculation zones
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Combustion Systems: Flares | - Control flame shape and flare performance for different fuel and wind velocity
- Avoid back mixing and flame blow out
- Design flare support system and placement
- Reduce maintenance cost
| - Optimize flare design, shape and burner internals
- Compare performance of different arrangements and best placement
- Perform radiation and heat transfer studies from the flame
- Learn about thermal and structural stresses
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Burners/Combustors | - Burner performance
- Back mixing and burner design
- Pollution and NOx reduction
- Fatigue and creep from thermal stresses
- Flame shape, instability and interaction
| - Burner design and performance for various fuels
- Help in developing low and ultra-low NOx burners
- Predict temperature and NOx, with varying fuel, load and swirl
- Predict thermal loads and stresses for different designs
- Burner spacing, orientation and resulting thermal performance of the system
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Erosion in a Pipe-Reduction | - Piping changes are necessary
- Erosion in elbow and/or reduction areas can lead to material depletion and leaks
- An estimate of life for given piping and evaluation of extense of wear are required
- Erosion can accelerate after pitting occurs
| - Erosion impact can be calculated as a function of:
- Angle of impingement
- Impact velocity
- Particle diameter
- Particle mass
- Collision frequency between particles and solid walls
- Material type (FEA) modelling can find erosion rates for field conditions for equipment lifetime
- Eroded material is removed leading to better material thickness predictions
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Erosion | - Higher flow rates, increased solid concentration in eroding equipment
- Substantial costly maintenance and shutdown costs
- Quite common in many aspects of oil and gas processing
| - Can find erosion rates for field conditions for equipment lifetime
- Optimization of production, operation, inspection and maintenance
- Maximum erosion in complex flows and geometries can be predicted to within a factor of 2-3
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Erosion in Filters/Screens | - Many operations include sand particles
- Screens and other filtration devices routinely are subjected to erosion
- Use filters to separate particles of different size
| - Design characteristics of the screen and filters
- Observe buildup of larger particles and effectiveness of the screen design
- Gain better understanding of particle buildup and particle accumulation
- Predict erosion and schedule appropriate operation and maintenance
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