Basic Flow Modelling for Long Distance Transport of Wellstream Fluids

This paper reports improvements in transient multiphase flow simulation to meet future industrial challenges. Multiphase flowlines can be hundreds of km long and feature dynamics with time spans of months, dictating the use of a 1D model on a coarse grid for engineering calculations. The 1D conservation equations for multiphase flow are robust but require closures. Robust mechanistic closures are obtained by integrating a 2D velocity field over the cross-section. In combination with the 1D equations, this gives a 3D flow description, greatly improving scale-up from experiments to field conditions. Extensive comparisons with experimental data reveal substantial model improvement.