Drag-Reducing Polymers as Energy-Saving Agents in Horizontal Two-Phase Oil-Water Dispersed Flow

Abstract

In this era of scarce and expensive energy, it has become imperative to devise means of reducing energy consumption, particularly in petroleum industries where huge amounts of energy are usually consumed. It is within this context that attempts have been made to reduce the energy consumption during pump-driven fluid transportation by the addition of drag-reducing polymers (DRPs), which mitigate the adverse frictional drag caused by the pipe wall. Hence, this study focused on quantifying the energy savings by the DRPs in dispersed oil-water flow at different Reynolds numbers using twelve DRPs, which possess different combinations of properties such as molecular weight, charge density, and ionic type. The results revealed substantial savings in energy in all cases with the highest saving of about 60.4%. Molecular weight posed a positive and most dominant impact among the three polymer properties investigated. The charge density slightly increased the energy savings at low values while the reverse was the case at high values. Cationic polymers produced slightly better performances than their anionic counterparts of comparable molecular weights and charge densities. Specifically, the energy saving at oil fractions of 0.1 and 0.3 increased from 6.9 to 60.4% and 5 to 51.9%, respectively, indicating the negative impact of the oil fraction. Overall, the use of DRPs has proved to be an efficient and sustainable means of saving substantial amounts of energy required to overcome the frictional drag in pipe flow.