Simulations on flow behaviors of heavy oil and its asphaltic residues through horizontal pipe using a filtered two-fluid model

Abstract Flow behaviors of the heavy oil and its asphaltic residues in a horizontal pipe are simulated using a filtered liquid-solid two-fluid model. The filtered liquid-solid two-fluid model systematically filters the highly resolved simulation results. The filtered model retains the mesoscopic scale flow characteristics to simulate the macroscopic flow. The test of drag force models including KTGF-model (Gidaspow model) and filtered model is conducted. The predicted pressure drops based on the filtered model with wall correction are well corresponded with the experimental data by Hector Zambrano et al. Also, the distributions of the time-average asphaltic residues volume fraction, asphaltic residues velocity, solids pressure and granular temperature along the radial direction are obtained for different asphaltic residues fractions of 6%, 8% and 12%. It is revealed that the mesoscopic-scale flow behavior of particle clusters is detailedly reproduced with a filtered model considering wall correction, and the asphaltic residues aggregations are more obvious at the bottom of the pipeline.