Simulation research on the flow field performance of the supersonic separator for natural gas

Abstract The separation of natural gas dehydration and de-heavy-hydrocarbons is an important part of natural gas treatment, the main purpose of which is to prevent liquid water in the later processing, transportation and storage of natural gas, and to prevent acidic gas dissolving in free water which will cause the corrosion of pipelines and equipment. This paper introduces a new type of natural gas separation technology— supersonic gas-liquid separation technology. Based on the working principle of supersonic gas liquid separator, using relevant theories such as fluid mechanics, gas dynamics and thermodynamics, the structure of Laval nozzle was mainly optimized and the flow field of the separator was simulated through ANSYS software, the distribution of the characteristic parameters such as pressure, velocity, temperature of shrink segment, throat, expansion segment of the supersonic cyclone separator nozzle were studied in this paper. The results show that the design of the nozzle structure meets the needs of low temperature, can make the water vapor in natural gas condense into small droplets and separate out, so as to achieve the goal of natural gas dehydration. Then, comparing the different design methods of Laval nozzle, the most reasonable design scheme is selected to improve the separation efficiency of the separator.