Learn more about low shear

Shear in itself is not necessarily a problem and a certain level of shear can even be required, either to promote coalescence or enhance gas-liquid separation in the event of foaming. However, too much shear has a negative influence on separation efficiency.

Typhonix has established Low Shear production philosophy, which is cleaner production through low shear process solutions. Rather than challenging the effects that emulsions create, we focus on the causes to their formation.

The definition and the purpose of the low shear valve is to reduce the shear forces acting on the fluids, while maintaining control properties. One effective way to reduce the shear forces in a control valve is to increase the volume involved in the energy dissipation.

The Low Shear pump is a multistage centrifugal pump with high hydraulic efficiency. The layout and configuration of the individual stages are custom designed to control shear forces and minimize oil droplet breaking.

To enable representative samples from the multiphase streams, certain precautions to the sampling equipment and procedures must be taken. A low shear sampler has to ensure that analyzed fluids are not exposed to pressure drop, which in turn, introduce shear forces to the fluid flow.

In the Coalescing Flow Conditioner (CFC), the turbulent energy that controls flow rate or pressure, promotes droplet growth rather than droplet breaking in multiphase flow.

Mechanical degradation of polymers is a well-known technical challenge in the petroleum industry. Polyacrylamide molecules are very long flexible chain molecules that are broken when submitted to high shear rates.

This series of articles will look at how droplet shearing in valves affects the downstream droplet size and separation efficiency. Effect of valve trim and other solutions to reduce the harm of valve shearing on downstream separation equipment will be presented, backed up with field and test data.

In this paper, a more cost efficient way to debottleneck the separation capacity is described and potential benefits of Typhoon System for both existing installations and the new field projects are discussed.

This article is intended to give a compact overview of some of the main factors involved in the pump selection. References to relevant articles are added for further reading. The topics discussed are; evaluation of the pump types, a discussion on the level of low shear that is acceptable, and evaluation of pump turndown solutions.

A low shear Typhoon^® Valve System was in 2018 installed to feed a CFU during an FPSO upgrade, to improve the production capacity and extend the operational lifetime of the vessel. By installing the low shear control valve, the CFU efficiency was improved by 23%.

An angled Low Shear Typhoon^® choke valve system was tested at Oseberg C in 2011. The results showed an average of 45% improvement of the water quality and 35% improvement of the oil quality, compared to that of the conventional choke valve.

An angled Low Shear Typhoon^® valve was installed on Troll C in the North Sea (Fram West Tie-back) in 2016. An average 60% improvement of the water quality was observed when using the Low Shear valve, compared to that of the standard choke.

A case study based on an actual produced water pump application has been performed to evaluate the operational and economic benefits of low shear and coalescing produced water pump types, compared to that of conventional produced water pumps.