Experimental and numerical investigation of cyclone gas-liquid separators

This work focuses on the experimental study and numerical simulation of the GLCC, a gas-liquid cyclone separator developed for the oil industry. The experiments are conducted on an air-water pilot. In a first step, visual observations were used to characterize the system operation according to the incoming flow rates. The influence of system's geometry and the fluid's properties are also considered.In a second step, the hydrodynamics of the vortex flow in the separator is studied by laser Doppler velocimetry. This experimental study, focusing on the important role of the vortex filament, allowed to explain for the first time various aspects of turbulent swirling flows. The analysis of the results also highlights the many limitations of the theoretical model used to design the GLCC. On the numerical side, the swirling flows in pipes are studied via the CFD commercial code Fluent 6.3. The results show that CFD can correctly reproduce the single-phase vortex flow. However, for multiphase flow simulations, it is shown that the current simulation techniques are not suitable to simulate this type of flow. (author)