Effects of Sleeve Parameters On Cavitation Control Performance in Steam Trap Valves

The steam trap valve is used in thermal power systems to pour out condensate water and keep steam inside. While flowing through steam trap valves, the condensate water can easily reach cavitation, which may cause serious damage to the piping system. In this paper, in order to control cavitation inside steam trap valves, effects of sleeve parameters, including orifice diameter, installation angle and thickness, are investigated using a cavitation model. The pressure, velocity and vapor distribution inside valves are analyzed and compared for different sleeve geometrical parameters. The total vapor volumes are also predicted and compared. The results show that the sleeve parameters have a significant influence on the cavitation intensity and cavitation vapor distributions. Specifically, the orifice diameter of the sleeve has much larger effect on each aspect than that of other two geometrical parameters of the sleeve. The improved geometrical parameters of the sleeve are determined to suppress the cavitation inside the valve. The sleeve with smaller diameter orifices, higher installation angle (maximum 80°) and higher thickness is recommended in practice for better anti-cavitation performance. The work is of significance for cavitation control and the optimization design of steam trap valves.

The Analysis of Pressure Drop on RL 014 for Condensate Disposal on Geothermal Pipe Line

<em>Geothermal energy from the Earth's magma is manufactured in the form of hot steam. On the process of transmission of steam in the Pipe Line, there are various problems such as condensation in the steam. Condensation can cause problems such as pressure drop. The formation of condensate gives a negative impact on production activities both in the pipeline or power plant, thus condensate formed in pipelines should be disposed of via the blow down or steam trap. Due to a large number of steam pipelines in the DW area then to do an analysis of pipelines in order to prioritize the disposal of condensate in the pipe more prone formed condensate. DW Area special analysis was not done against condensation and the number of condensates that are formed so as to indicate the occurrence of condensation done with regular analysis pressure drop in the pipeline. The results of the analysis of the pipeline must first and more frequently carried out disposal of condensate on the RL 014 based on pressure drop highest is line DW 14 a and DW 67, next line DW 18 and 17, and the last is the line 11 and 14 b DW. The condition of the steam trap is also noteworthy if the steam trap leak then it can lower the temperature in the pipe. The drop in temperature in the pipeline will accelerate the condensation, the results of the analysis there is a steam trap leaked is 401.00.17.ST19 and 401.00.05.ST14 . Steam trap leaked that needs to be done to combat the most. The production of steam RL 014 per day was able to donate a 52.52% or about 73.5 MW of the total needs of PLTP (geothermal power plant) 140 MW per day.</em>

An Optimization Study on Cavitation Flow in a Steam Trap Valve

Steam trap valves are mainly used in thermal power systems to pour out condensate water and keep steam inside. While during the condensate water flowing through steam trap valves, the condensate water is easy to reaching cavitation, which may cause serious damage to the piping system. In order to reducing the cavitation occupation in steam trap valves, this paper mainly deals with an optimization study. With Computational Fluid Dynamics codes, numerical model of a typical steam trap valve is established with Mixture model. The inner pressure field, flow field and steam volume fraction are all achieved under both maximum flow rate working condition and regular working condition. Based on the cavitation results, the throttling stages of the steam trap valve are optimized. And the results show that cavitation range inside the steam trap valve is reduced.

Dynamic Steam-Trap-Control Simulation Technique: Formulation, Implementation, and Performance Analysis

Summary Steam-trap subcool is a technique that is used to maintain the energy efficiency of the steam-assisted-gravity-drainage (SAGD) process by most heavy-oil producers in Canada. The concept is rather simple (i.e., create a liquid pool around the production well to prevent steam from escaping from the steam chamber into the production well). A numerical steam trap based on a thermodynamic approach was implemented by Edmunds (2000), and it has been used in simulations with different types of wellbore models in commercial codes. In this approach, a thermodynamic relationship is solved as a well-residual equation to guarantee that the bottomhole temperature (BHT) is less than the saturation temperature of water at the hottest location along the wellbore. The location of the hottest spot along the wellbore is static in time. Steam trap is a dynamic process, and inflow temperatures can vary significantly along the wellbore according to the local fluid and rock properties along the well. It is highly possible that the location of the hottest spot along the well changes frequently with time during the SAGD operation. In this study, the simulation of a dynamic steam-trap-control technique is provided. The location of the hottest spot along the wellbore is scanned at every timestep. Severe numerical instabilities are observed when the thermodynamic approach is used. A new constraint based on the total production rate at reservoir condition is introduced. Details of the mathematical formulation and the numerical behavior of the new method are discussed in this paper. Several real field models with different wellbore designs (multiple tubing strings) are simulated, and the results of the new approach are compared with the thermodynamic approach. Simulation results show that the numerical performance of this new approach is significantly more stable. We also compared the run time of simulation between cases with new well constraint and thermodynamic steam-trap control, and results show a significant improvement in simulation run time.

On Subcool Control in Steam-Assisted-Gravity-Drainage Producers— Part I: Stability Envelopes

Summary Steam-assisted-gravity-drainage (SAGD) industry experience indicates that the majority of producer workovers occur because of liners or electrical submersible pumps (ESPs), and both failures appear to result from inefficient “steam-trap control.” Thermodynamic steam-trap control, also termed “subcool control,” is a typical operation strategy for most SAGD wells. Simply, subcool (or reservoir subcool vs. pump subcool) is the temperature difference between the steam chamber (or injected steam) and the produced fluid. The main objective is to keep subcool higher than a set value that varies between 0 to 40° and even higher values. This study presents a method to calculate the liquid-pool level from the temperature profile in observation wells, and liquid-pool shrinkage as a function of time. Unfortunately, it is not practical to monitor the liquid level by having observation wells for every SAGD well pair. For this reason, the algebraic equation for liquid-pool depletion on the basis of wellbore-drawdown, subcool, and emulsion productivity is generated. By use of this equation, the envelopes are suggested to differentiate three different regimes: “stable production,” “liquid-pool depletion,” and “steam-breakthrough limit.” Gas lift operations such as the MacKay River thermal project suggested that envelopes for constant wellbore drawdown are not practical. Therefore, the steam-breakthrough limit is defined for constant rate, which is more consistent in gas lift operations. In this study, the steam-breakthrough limit is validated for operation data from the MacKay River. This study provides a new insight into how factors such as production rate and wellbore drawdown can compromise subcool control and cause steam breakthrough, and how liquid-pool depletion may result in uncontrolled steam coning at long time. As a part of this study, a minimum-subcool concept (or target reservoir subcool) is presented as a function of skin and pressure drawdown. It is shown that the minimum subcool is highly dependent on the maturity of steam-chamber and underburden heat loss especially for zero-skin producers. The results of this work emphasize that the target subcool on the producer should increase slightly with chamber maturity, considering that the skin is nonzero for most SAGD producers.