The progressing cavity pump is a type of positive displacement pump that is capable of moving nearly any fluid. This type of pump transports fluids in a series of discrete cavities formed by the helical geometries of its rigid rotor and elastomeric stator. With appropriate materials for the rotor and stator, this pump can move combinations of liquids, suspended solids, and gasses equally well. Because of its versatility, the progressing cavity pump is widely used in the oil industry to transport mixtures of oil, water, and sediment; this investigation was prompted by a desire to extend the use of progressing cavity pumps to wet gas pumping applications. One of the progressing cavity pump's limitations is that the friction between the rotor and stator can generate enough heat to damage the rotor if the pump is not lubricated and cooled by the process fluid. Conventional wisdom dictates that this type of pump will overheat if it pumps only gas, with no liquid in the process fluid. If a progressing cavity pump is used to boost the output from a wet gas well, it could potentially be damaged if the well's output is too dry for an extended period of time. This project seeks to determine how a progressing cavity pump behaves when operating at gas volume fractions between 0.90 and 0.98. A progressing cavity pump manufactured by seepex, model no. BN 130-12, is tested at half and full speed using air-water mixtures with gas volume fractions of 0.90, 0.92, 0.94, 0.96, and 0.98. The pump's inlet and outlet conditions are controlled to produce suction pressures of 15, 30, and 45 psi and outlet pressures 0, 30, 60, 90, 120, and 150 psi higher than the inlet pressure. A series of thermocouples, pressure transducers, and turbine flow meters measures the pump's inlet and outlet conditions, the flow rates of water and air entering the pump, and pressures and temperatures at four positions within the pump's stator. Over all test conditions, the maximum recorded temperature of the pump stator did not exceed the maximum safe rubber temperature specified by the manufacturer. The pump’s flow rate is independent of both the fluid's gas volume fraction and the pressure difference across the pump, but it increases slightly with the pump's suction pressure. The pump's mechanical load, however, is dependent only on the pressure difference across the pump and increases linearly with that parameter. Pressure measurements within the stator demonstrated that the leakage between the pump's cavities increases with the fluids gas volume fraction, indicating that liquid inside the pump improves its sealing capability. However, those same measurements failed to detect any appreciable leakage between the two pressure taps nearest the pump's inlet. This last observation suggests that the pump could be shortened by as much as 25 percent without losing any performance in the range of tested conditions; shortening the pump should increase its efficiency by decreasing its frictional mechanical load.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T14:58:16Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 VictorWFA_DISSERT.pdf: 4406666 bytes, checksum: 17531cab6caf785a3e82578d15d0e5d9 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-11-05 / The progressing cavity pumping (PCP) is one of the most applied oil lift methods nowadays in oil extraction due to its ability to pump heavy and high gas fraction flows. The computational modeling of PCPs appears as a tool to help experiments with the pump and therefore, obtain precisely the pump operational variables, contributing to pump s project and field operation otimization in the respectively situation. A computational model for multiphase flow inside a metallic stator PCP which consider the relative motion between rotor and stator was developed in the present work. In such model, the gas-liquid bubbly flow pattern was considered, which is a very common situation in practice. The Eulerian-Eulerian approach, considering the homogeneous and inhomogeneous models, was employed and gas was treated taking into account an ideal gas state. The effects of the different gas volume fractions in pump volumetric eficiency, pressure distribution, power, slippage flow rate and volumetric flow rate were analyzed. The results shown that the developed model is capable of reproducing pump dynamic behaviour under the multiphase flow conditions early performed in experimental works / O bombeio por cavidades progressivas (BCP) ? um dos m?todos de eleva??o artificial mais utilizados atualmente pela ind?stria do petr?leo devido ? sua capacidade de atuar em reservat?rios de ?leos pesados e com elevada fra??o de g?s. A modelagem computacional de BCPs surge como uma ferramenta para auxiliar os experimentos com a bomba e assim obter com precis?o as suas vari?veis de opera??o, o que contribui para a otimiza??o do projeto e da opera??o da bomba na situa??o a qual se encontra. Um modelo computacional do escoamento multif?sico no interior de uma BCP de estator met?lico que considera o movimento relativo entre o rotor e o estator foi desenvolvido no presente trabalho. Em tal modelo, o escoamento g?s-l?quido no padr?o de bolhas foi considerado, o que ? uma situa??o muito comum na pr?tica. A abordagem Euleriana- Euleriana, considerando o modelo homog?neo e n?o-homog?neo, foi empregada e o g?s foi tratado levando em considera??o um estado de gas ideal. Os efeitos das diferentes fra??es de g?s na efici?ncia da bomba, distribui??o de press?o, pot?ncia, taxa de escorregamento e vaz?o volum?trica foram analisados. Os resultados mostraram que o modelo desenvolvido ? capaz de reproduzir o comportamento din?mico da BCP sob as condi??es de escoamento multif?sico previamente realizados em trabalhos experimentais