Supervisors - Dr. Filipe Teixeira-Dias, University of Edinburgh and Prof. Don McGlinchey, Glasgow Caledonian University
PhD Student - Idalina Alcantara, University of Edinburgh
Status - Closed
North Sea oil wells when first developed had typical sand in liquid of about 0.01% by volume. Recent global trends in the oil and gas sector has seen the exploration and development of deeper wells with heavier more viscous oils which require greater operating pressures giving more fracture to fissures in order to release oil, this can result in sand content of the order of 10% by volume under severe slugging conditions. Increased operating pressures, a wider range of fluid properties and higher sand contents have the potential to bring about a fundamental shift in flow behaviours and in flow measurement techniques. A joint project with a complementary pair of ETP studentships are sought with the research collaboration and joint supervision from Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU), The University of Edinburgh (UoE) and NEL. The project aims to bring together expertise in two Scottish universities in modelling and measurement of fluid / solids flows to investigate the potential to simulate these multiphase flows and to compare this with existing modelling techniques using commercial CFD codes and of these codes coupled to a discrete element method code. The models will be validated on purpose built test facilities at Glasgow Caledonian University and at the national standard test facility at NEL. This collaboration will result in a unique facility for Scotland and the UK to address the needs for flow assurance from future oil and gas reserves. The work proposed here will exploit the considerable synergy with the novel multiphase flow SPH – DEM model development in the complementary ETP proposal led by Dr Filipe Teixeira-Dias and Prof. Jin Ooi of the University of Edinburgh. Both proposals are also designed to be standalone with a clear separation in tasks.