Numerical Simulation of Compressible Flow in Gas Liquid Separator

The Gas Liquid Separator (GLS) has been widely used by petroleum industry, chemical engineering, the area of environmental protection, etc. A large quantity of works on the GLS available in literature includes experimental data, numerical simulations and field applications. However, previous studies on the GLS were based on gas incompressible circumstances. In fact, the gas flows from high to low pressure area that it lead to the density fluctuations of gas in separator, the changes of density cause volume expansion of gas, so that separation performance of the GLS is reduced. Numerical simulation for the GLS was developed based on compressible and incompressible flow. Research results show that flow field of two ways and separation performance were different.