Numerical evaluation of the pressure drop in multiphase flow of the catenary riser with the presence of leakage

The growing demand for oil brings the need for discovery of deeper reservoirs, especially of ultra-deepwater reservoirs. Thus, production in marine systems using components such as risers (flexible or rigid pipes) has been the focus of many studies in different areas. These ducts are used in the transportation of multiphase fluids (oil, water and gas) produced from the oil well located on the seabed to the platform surface. Due to the extreme conditions present in the offshore fields of production, the equipments that transport produced fluids operate close to their limits. So eventually, the flexible pipes may have structural integrity faults like leaks, which can cause production losses, accidents with victims and environmental disasters. The leak depends of a number of properties or parameters measured at the site of the leak, for example, integrity of the pipe material, release of fluids and noise emission characteristics or manifestation of some other type of signal behavior, variation of pressure drops close to the leak, among others. There are a variety of techniques available for detecting leaks, among which there is the mathematical modeling approach using computational techniques. In this context, this paper aims to study the fluid dynamics of a transient multiphase flow in a catenary riser in the presence of leakage. Herein a 3D Eulerian-Eulerian model was applied, including the turbulent model (RNG k-ϵ), using the commercial package ANSYS CFX® 15 to perform all simulations. The numerical results of velocity, volume fraction and pressure of the involved phases are presented and discussed. © 2016 Trans Tech Publications.