A Virtual Engineering Methodology to Prevent Erosion-Related

Accidents in the Petroleum Industry

Author: David Schowalter, PhD • Lead Consulting Engineer, Petroleum Industry • Fluent Inc.

Abstract
“It is vital that
Erosion of oil and gas equipment has become a significant financial burden on both the companies who
upstream and the downstream components of the petroleum industry. Concerns over loss of operate high-
life, injuries, lawsuits, downtime, and plant reconstruction are keeping plant and engineering hazard sites –
managers awake at night. This paper outlines a cost-effective methodology for such as oil
minimizing erosion and avoiding dangerous and expensive accidents. refineries and
chemical plants –
put rigid and
The Challenge of Erosion
robust systems
Some indication of erosion’s incurred cost can be ascertained from the event at a in place for
ConocoPhillips oil refinery in Humberside, UK in 2001. Erosion and corrosion caused a 15 cm inspecting
diameter pipe to rupture. The released liquid petroleum gas (LPG) exploded and the resulting pipework to
fire caused other pipes to fail, leading to yet another explosion. After burning for two and a detect corrosion
half hours, there were, amazingly, no serious injuries. However, there was significant damage or other defects.”
to process equipment and buildings reported both on- and off-site. ConocoPhillips was fined Kevin Allars
Head of Chemical
£895,000, which of course did not include the internal costs to replace the process equip- Industries Division,
ment. If there had been injuries or loss of life, as often occurs during refinery accidents, the Health and Safety
Executive, Great Britain
costs of fines, lawsuits, and the ensuing necessary public relations campaign would have been
significantly higher.

The presence of solid particles is ubiquitous in the petroleum industry. On the upstream side of the industry, particles
typically come from sand, crushed rock, or drilling mud, whereas they usually consist of catalyst in the downsteam end of
the process. Erosion occurs when particles impact the solid walls of transport equipment, causing some of the wall mate-
rial to break free. After millions or billions of impacts in equipment that is operated continuously, the wall can become dan-
gerously thin, resulting in rupture, or equipment failure. Erosion corrosion is a variant of basic erosion, in which the rate
of corrosion is accelerated due to the relative motion of a corrosive fluid and a metal surface. Increased turbulence caused
by pitting on the internal surfaces of a tube can result in rapidly increasing erosion rates.

Erosion has been proven to affect a wide variety of upstream and downstream oil and gas equipment, including drill bits,
other downhole machinery, heat exchangers, heat recovery boilers, fluidized beds (including all fluidized catalytic cracker,
or FCC, hardware), process pumps, cyclones, and burner tips. Downstream refiners are motivated to minimize erosion
costs because of pressure on profit margins as fuel and crude oil become more costly. Upstream drilling companies, on
the other hand, are motivated by the need to extract oil from ever more challenging environments, and the difficulties in
troubleshooting when failures occur in problematic places like the ocean floor. The pressure is on for engineers to “get it
right the first time” rather than using a trial and error approach, which, as we’ve seen, can result in steep financial penal-
ties, or worse yet, loss of life.

WP104
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Virtual Engineering to the Rescue

Computer-aided engineering (CAE) enables plant and equipment engineers to test their designs for erosion characteristics
to avoid failure in the field or costly and time-consuming physical testing of equipment. Engineers can use existing software
technology which analyzes both fluid and particle motion, and predicts erosion rates on surfaces due to the particle
impacts.

Erosion analysis may be done in troubleshooting mode, after equipment has failed and retrofit or redesign is necessary
in order to avoid a future rupture. Ideally, however, the computational study should be performed upfront, before equipment
is deployed in the field. This approach should be explored in any scenario involving suspensions of possibly eroding
particles undergoing sharp changes in flow direction. Erosion corrosion can also be investigated for similar scenarios
involving the flow of corrosive materials.

The first stage of virtual analysis is generating a three-dimensional flow solution within the component of interest. This
involves three steps:
1) creating a three-dimensional computer model of the part geometry,
2) generating a computational mesh,
3) using a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver to render the 3D flow field.

Sometimes, the computer model is already available in computer-aided design (CAD) files originally used to draw the
component. Alternatively, a model can be built using the virtual analysis software. Next, a mesh generation tool uses the
CAD model to split the flow volume into small cells, each of which will act as control volumes in the flow solver. Tools are
currently available which provide a very high level of automation in this meshing process. The fluid material properties and
boundary conditions are specified in the solver, which then uses an iterative method to solve for the flow field. Figure 1
illustrates a simple two-elbowed geometry in this process, with the final result showing flow pathlines through the pipe.

a) b) c)
Figure 1. a) CAD geometry of part, b) computational mesh, c) flow field simulation showing flow pathlines - blue indicates the lowest value and red
the highest

The next stage is simulation of particle tracks within the flow domain. These tracks will depend upon particle properties,
including material and particle size. The flow solver will take these properties, the coefficient of restitution on the walls,
and the effect of the surrounding fluid into account as it calculates the particle tracks. At locations where particles do
impact the walls, an erosion model in the solver is used to translate the particle impact rate into an erosion rate. The selec-
tion of which model to use will depend on particle type and the wall material. Figure 2a shows particle tracks for the same
pipe as shown above, which are subtly different than the fluid pathlines from Figure 1c, particularly in regions of high fluid
acceleration. Figure 2b shows contours of erosion rate calculated from the impacts of these particles on the pipe wall. By
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visualizing these results, the engineer has a clear idea of where erosion is occurring and, from the particle tracks, can
gain an understanding of what flow features are causing a high impact rate of particles. This knowledge, in turn, provides
the engineer with insight as to what could be changed in the geometry in order to reduce the particle impingement rate.
This may involve reducing the bend angle, inserting a guide vane, or some other geometrical change in the part.

a) b)
Figure 2. In each example, red indicates the highest value and blue is the lowest a) Particle tracks in pipe colored by residence time, b) pipe wall
erosion rates calculated from particle impacts

In some cases, process equipment may be transporting very dense

multiphase flows, such as a slurry. This type of material can be modeled
using an Eulerian multiphase model in the solver analysis software,
which tracks the local solid volume fraction and takes the effect of the
solid phase into account for fluid properties and flow behavior. In this
regime, erosion rate tends to be strongly correlated to shear stress.
Similarly, erosion corrosion may depend upon either shear stress, or
locally high levels of turbulence. The goal may be eliminating high
shear stress or turbulence “hot spots,” in which case the engineer can
use the results of the flow model to indicate these regions, as shown in
Figure 3. Once the regions are identified, methods to mitigate the shear
stress levels can be devised and investigated with a new flow model. If
Figure 3. Shear stress distribution in a pipe, with red indicating
quantitative rather than qualitative information about predicted erosion the maximum value
rates in slurry transport equipment is desired, then a new erosion rate
function depending upon shear stress or other quantities can be programmed into the flow modeling software. Most pack-
ages allow custom postprocessing functions to be created interactively by the user.

Studying Geometric Changes Over Time

It is often desirable to investigate how erosion will affect the equipment over time. Generally, the erosion rates for the ini-
tial geometry of the equipment cannot be extrapolated for the life of the part. As erosion takes its toll, the flow and parti-
cle motion will change, modifying the local erosion rate in turn. There may be cases in which the erosion rates are reduced
because of flow changes due to the wearing of surfaces, though the opposite could also be true.

In order to investigate the erosion characteristics over the life of a part, an unsteady flow model must be employed, along
with the use of a moving deforming mesh capability in the flow solver. This capability allows a surface to deform as ero-
sion occurs. The flow solution then adjusts over time as the geometry deforms, allowing the calculation of new erosion
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rates. An example of this type of calculation is shown in Figure 4.

4a shows the erosion rate at start-up, with a maximum value of
1.5 X 10-6 kg/m2s. After 5-1/2 years of operation, the erosion rate
contours change, as shown in 4b, with nearly the same maximum
value but on a deformed surface.

Automated Optimization
The highlighted examples illustrate how an engineer can use com-
putational flow modeling to guide changes to design or operating
parameters to reduce erosion rates in process equipment. The level a)
of effort may be reduced even further, however, through the use of
commercial computational optimization tools. By using these tools in
conjunction with flow modeling, an engineer can specify what geomet-
ric and/or operational parameters are allowed to change, and what
should be minimized. Variable parameters may include the size of
a baffle, the angle of bend in a pipe, the flow rate, or any combina-
tion of these. Mean erosion rate on a specific surface would be one
example of a quantity to be minimized. The optimization software
can be directed (usually through a graphical interface) how these
parameters can be accessed in input files to the flow modeling soft-
ware. The optimizer will then choose a range of flow modeling cases
to be run automatically, create a multi-variable regression, and pro-
vide the user with the optimal parameters. This sophisticated b)
automation saves a substantial amount of time for the engineer, who Figure 4. For both figures, red is the maximum value and blue
is the lowest a) contours of erosion rate for initial geometry,
no longer needs to set up many similar problems by hand, and per- b) contours of erosion rate after 5-1/2 years of operation
form trial and error computations in order to arrive at the best design.

An Example from the Field

The example above, while realistic, is also geometrically simple, and was chosen in order to illustrate the workflow
process for erosion prediction. Following is a real-world industrial example of how flow modeling was used to troubleshoot
erosion problems at a refinery.

Flow rates and catalyst loading inside TOTAL’s Provence refinery in France had been steadily increasing over the last ten
years. As a result, erosion in the cyclones became more and more significant. To better understand the phenomenon, a
flow simulation was performed for one of the units. Catalyst particles with sizes ranging from 10 to 130 microns were
included in the calculation. The simulations accurately predicted several observed characteristics of the cyclone, such as
the separation efficiency, catalyst trajectories, and gas velocity profiles. They were also used to identify troublesome
zones, which matched observations as shown in Figure 5. The exercise led to a better understanding of the causes of
erosion and pitting, and helped engineers to propose and evaluate a new cyclone design, which was implemented dur-
ing a planned shutdown.
A Virtual Engineering Methodology to Prevent Erosion-Related Accidents in the Petroleum Industry

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Figure 5. Erosion characteristics

observed in the field and relating
to flow characteristics evaluated
with flow modeling
Courtesy of Gonfreville Research Catalyst impact
Centre, Process & Refining Division, on inlet tube
TOTAL France

Recirculation
near end of
first spiral

Provence Refinery primary cyclone

Conclusions
The above example illustrates how erosion prediction tools are being deployed in the petroleum industry. Erosion has
become a critical safety and cost concern in the upstream and downstream petroleum industry. This white paper has
explained how virtual flow modeling can reduce risk, costs, and effort by predicting erosion in process equipment. The engi-
neering effort required is minimal, particularly when safety hazards and the cost of troubleshooting in offshore and in deep
wells are considered.

Fluent Inc.
Fluent is the world’s largest provider of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software and consulting services. Fluent’s
software is used for simulation, visualization, and analysis of fluid flow, heat and mass transfer, and chemical reactions. It
is a vital part of the computer-aided engineering (CAE) process for companies around the world and is deployed in nearly
every manufacturing industry. For over 20 years, Fluent has been providing simulation capabilities and services in the petro-
chemical industry, earning a strong reputation for reducing costs and improving operations. Fluent’s corporate headquarters
are located in Lebanon, New Hampshire, USA, with offices in Belgium, England, France, Germany, India, Italy, China, Japan
and Sweden. Its CFD software is also available around the world through joint ventures, partnerships, and distributors in
Korea, Australia, Brazil, China, Taiwan, the Czech Republic, Middle East, and most European countries.

For more information: www.fluent.com • [email protected] • 800-445-4454 x322

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