ASCOMP Oil and Gas Modeling and Consultancy Services

ASCOMP provides modelling and consulting services in the petroleum industry and related chemical and process engineering, with activities ranging from transport in pipes, and oil oscillation in pores, to flow in porous media and three-phase flow separation. Our simulation based solutions are meant to help industries to anticipate upcoming difficulties and safety issues in mature and deepwater fields, in deeply-buried reservoirs, and long distance transport. In all these areas, the complexity of flow physics is ever growing, requiring the resort to high-end fluid flow simulation techniques with advanced physics models, transcending 1D codes, e.g. Olga.

Oil and gas multiphase flow simulation in TransAT

We use our simulation code TransAT to simulate a wide range of gas-liquid and fluid-solid multiphase flows present in oil & gas sector. TransAT has unique capabilities to complex physics including, wetting, flocculation, phase separation, and interfacial turbulence. TransAT allows predicting 2D and 3D petroleum flows featuring multi-components fluids (particles-gas-water-oil), both at the upstream (exploration) and downstream (transport and separation) levels. In TransAT, dealing with complex multi-fluid flows with heat & mass transfer is based on continuous Navier-Stokes equations in which properties are modified as required, using tailored numerical techniques and physical models for each class of flow.

Oil separation

Gravity separators are used to separate oil, water, gas and sand. The three phase flow is very complex, featuring all sorts of flow-regimes and characteristics: particle and sediment, drops, interfaces, phase change, flocculation, coalescence, fragmentation and also emulsions. The complexity of the physics requires a dedicated software like TransAT to treat these flows and help re-design gravity separators.

Slug flow prediction

Slug flow is a flow regime with large coherent disturbances of aerated liquid masses that fill the pipe cross-section entirely and travel downstream at high speed, causing large pressure fluctuations and variations in the flow rates that can affect process equipments. TransAT is capable to precisely describe slug formation and motion in 3D pipes, including up-slopes and vertical configurations.

Flow through porous media

The flow of oil, water and gas in the complex network of paths in petroleum reservoir rocks constitutes probably the most complex embodiment of interfacial interactions and their consequences on multiphase transport behaviour in porous media. These fundamental interactions still need to be explored and better understood. TransAT has proven very useful in predicting this class of flow, using the IST/BMR technique.

Wave breaking on offshore rigs

Rogue waves approaching oil rigs can be devastating for the entire offshore platform, by exerting tremendous unsteady loads on the rig, causing either the failure of pillars or in some cases the rupture of the under-water fixation cables. Today use is made of TransAT to predict the effect of various waves types, amplitudes and slopes over oil rigs, which could be of a very complex shape.

Sand hold-up in pipes

Sand hold-up is a key hydrodynamic parameter for performance estimation, design, operation and control of oil-gas-sand multiphase production and pipeline transportation systems. TransAT combines the interface tracking and Eulerian field methods with the particle Lagrangian module to predict horizontal air-water-sand three-phase flow. This should help designers to advance their mechanistic approach for predicting local sand hold-up distribution.

Black powder deposition in gas pipelines

Black powder affects the flow performance of gas pipelines and leads to severe accidents in wells or during transport. With TransAT we have developed new physical models to predict the deposition and transport of clouds of black-powder particles. The models account for the complete physical mechanisms in play, with varying operational parameters on the critical gas flow rate that can evacuate a bed of particles to avoid powder-slug formation.