Investigation of flow characteristics in helical separator

The oil recovery technology of submersible electric pump has the advantages of multi-function and strong adaptability, which has become one of the important lifting methods at present. High gas-liquid ratio and low downhole pressure in oil well will lead to a large amount of natural gas in crude oil. Cavitation and air lock will shorten the pump operation cycle. Therefore, a gas separator is installed at the inlet of the pump to separate the gas from the well fluid, reducing the volume fraction of the gas entering the pump and improving the production efficiency of the pump. In this study, the flow passage of the helical separator is treated as an equal-section pipeline in the research process. Through theoretical analysis and numerical simulation, the separation efficiency and pressure loss in the helical separator are studied and the expression of the total liquid phase drag multiplier applicable to the separator structure is obtained by the method of fitting.