The research results of scholars at Amirkabir University of Technology on the examination of asphaltene agglomerates in turbulent pipe flow were published in one of the most important international journals with an impact factor of 15.1.
According to the public relations office of Amirkabir University, the paper by Seyyedeh Fatemeh Hosseini, a PhD graduate under the supervision of Dr. Mehrdad Mozaffarian and with the consultation of Dr. Bahram Dabir, faculty members of the Chemical Engineering Department of this university, along with Dr. Harry van den Akker from the University of Limerick, Ireland, titled "A coupled DEM-CFD analysis of asphaltene particles agglomeration in turbulent pipe flow," was published in the International Journal of Chemical Engineering.
Ensuring smooth flow is a pressing issue in the oil industry today. This means that throughout the project's lifespan, there should be confidence that the product produced from the reservoir can be transported through the wellbore and pipelines without hassle to the sales point. The formation and settlement of heavy hydrocarbons are among the main barriers to achieving this goal since they cause numerous problems in the extraction, transportation, and processing of oil.
Since removing heavy hydrocarbon deposits using conventional methods like solvents, inhibitors, and mechanical techniques can be costly and problematic, it is essential to investigate the phenomena of agglomeration, fragmentation, and settling of asphaltene particles in fluid flow using computational methods.
The method used in this paper calculates all forces and particle movements at a microscopic scale, providing precise information on the growth of asphaltene particles under flow conditions.
In this research, the agglomeration of asphaltene particles in turbulent flow was analyzed using two commercial software programs, Ansys Fluent and EDEM, in a four-way coupling process.
Due to the presence of very fine asphaltene particles, the computational cost of this method is quite high. Therefore, in this study, a new scaling method was introduced for the first time to reduce execution time and increase the time step.
The proposed method in this paper is applicable not only to asphaltene particles but also to all sticky particles. Ultimately, by using the presented scaling method, the simulation of asphaltene particles in a pipe with turbulent flow was carried out, and the results were compared qualitatively and quantitatively.