NUMERICAL STUDY OF THE SAND REMOVAL IN AN IMPACT SEPARATOR WITH PARTICLE LADEN CRUDE OIL FLOW

When extracting crude oil, it could be accompanied by impurities such as solid particles (sand). Their presence is undesirable for two reasons. First, it increases the frequency of failures in equipments, accessories, and pipes due to erosion. And, the derived product from crude oil cannot reach the quality standards. The most common equipment used to separate the solids from the crude oil is the cyclonic separator. In this research we study a more cost-effective alternative (it is cheaper to make and maintain), the impact plate separator. A CFD software was used to study the behavior of the crude oil-sand flow in an impact plate separator. With the goal of increasing the removal of particles in the equipment, it was modified for a total of 13 different geometrical configurations. For all the configurations, the particles showed a behavior of being dominated by the drag of the flow when they are of very small size and of being greatly influenced by gravity and inertia when they are of larger diameter. Results showed that the best removal was obtained with the impact plate placed at 3/4 of the separator diameter from the inlet.