• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.42-49
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• 2019

Drilling mud was used once in the step of separating the gas and powder they were transported to a surge tank. At that time, the fine powder, such as dust that is not separated from the gas, is included in the gas that was separated from the mud. The fine particles of the powder are collected to increase the density of the powder and prevent air pollution. To remove particles from air or another gas, a cyclone-type separator generally can be used with the principles of vortex separation without using a filter system. In this study, we conducted numerical simulations of air-particle flow consisting of two components in a cyclone separator in a mud handling system to investigate the characteristics of turbulent vortical flow and to evaluate the collection efficiency using the commercial software, STAR-CCM+. First, the single-phase air flow was simulated and validated through the comparison with experiments (Boysan et al., 1983) and other CFD simulation results (Slack et al., 2000). Then, based on one-way coupling simulation for air and powder particles, the multi-phase flow was simulated, and the collection efficiency for various sizes of particles was compared with the experimental and theoretical results.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.280-287
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• 2014

In this paper, the numerical simulation of the gas-liquid flow in a cylinder cyclone separator is performed to investigate the flow characteristics using a commercial software, FLUENT, which solves the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes(RaNS) equations. First, a single-phase flow with water in a gas-liquid cylinder cyclone(GLCC) separator is simulated and compared with the experiments(Farchi, 1990) and numerical simulations(Erdal, 1997). Then, the characteristics of the multi-phase flow for water-air, mud-only, and mud-air cases are discussed in the view point of the feasibilities for a mud handling system.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.107-116
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• 2017

When drilling operation is being performed, many physical and chemical changes are occurred near wellbore. To handle various changes of well condition and keep drilling process safe, additives of bulk, such as bentonite for increasing density of drilling mud, barite for increasing viscosity of drilling mud, polymer for chemical control, or surfactant, are added into drilling mud through a mud shear mixer. Because the achievement of the required material property through mud mixing system is essential to stabilize drilling system, it is of importance to analyze multi-phase flow during mud mixing process, which is directly related to increase mixing performance of the system and guarantee the safety of the whole drilling system. In this study, a series of liquid-solid flow simulation based on a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) are performed with comparing to solid concentration in experiment by Gilles et al. [2004] to understand the characteristics of liquid-solid mixing in a mud shear mixer. And then, the simulation-based design of shear mixer are carried out to improve mixing performance in a mud handling system.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.331-341
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• 2015

A degasser is a separation unit used in drilling to separate gas from the drilling mud. The degasser used in offshore drilling was developed at an early stage of drilling. Since its development, the design of the degasser’s internal structure has been optimized, with many limitations due to the restrictions of experimental and computational performance measurement methods. Despite the recent development of CFD technology for multiphase flow analysis, CFD has only been used in a limited way for degasser internal flow analysis and design optimization. In this study, a design optimization procedure for a degasser’s internal structure design was proposed, and CFD analyses of three types of internal structural designs were performed to evaluate the separation performance. The CFD result for each design type was used for the design optimization and, as the result, an optimized design is proposed.