CFD modeling of properties of steam ejector for oil and oil product heating in ANSYS

The purpose of this work is developing a computer model of steam ejector for oil heating, oil product pumpout, and performing of other key functions in the oil and gas industry ANSYS Fluent is applied. To achieve this purpose a procedure is used including a computational mesh adaptation algorithm, a selection of the turbulence model, a determination of the optimal settings of Fluent problem solver, an assessment of the accuracy of the results. Based on the results of the computations made, the model is verified using experimental data and a dependency of the basic parameters of its work is studied. The article includes a description of the recommended settings for the Fluent problem solver for the engineering computations of the jet devices.
Materials and methods
The geometry was developed in Autodesk AutoCAD. The computation is made in Ansys Fluent.
Results
A computer model of steam ejector for heating oil, pumping out oil products etc. is introduced. Overall uncertainty of the results of the operating mode for pressure is 2.2%, for temperature it is 1.6%. For other computation modes, the uncertainties do not exceed 2-3% for temperature and pressure. A description of recommended settings is proposed for Fluent solver for engineering computations of the jet devices. The obtained results correspond with theoretical and experimental data within 2-4% deviations, and are presented as current paths, contours, graphs, and a table. Ejector computation modes are defined for the preset parameter of its operation.
Conclusions
The above examples and results illustrate how modern numerical methods of computational fluid dynamics problem solving allow simulating a physical experiment fully with minimal uncertainties not exceeding several percent. Thus, it significantly reduce a requirement to conduct time and money consuming experiments related to defining steam ejector operating modes for heating the oil products of different composition. Numerical computer experiment can come to prominence. However, it is not possible to speak about adequacy of the developed models without consistent results of the physical experiments and without their comparison with the modeling results. For the nozzle to free space exhaust velocity profile, a mach diamond is observed, which characteristic of all exhaust processes with Mach number over 1 (M > 1). High pressure steam workflow (1.317 MPa) during the exhaust process injects low pressure steam flow (0.147 MPa), which results in the formation of 0.414 MPa steam.