midwest

Gas-Liquid Cylindrical Cyclone for compact gas liquid separations

The process fluid enters a sloped tangential inlet nozzle, sized to deliver a preconditioned flow stream into the body of the separator. The momentum of the process fluid combined with the tangential inlet generates a liquid vortex with sufficient G-forces for bulk gas and liquid separation to rapidly occur. Finally, the gas exits through the top of the GLCC and the liquid exits though the bottom of the GLCC.

The GLCC can be controlled in any of the following means, either individually, or in combination:

Passive separation: (No active control) Gas and liquid are recombined downstream of the GLCC at an elevation that is the same as the liquid level desired in the GLCC.

Active separation: A back pressure valve is installed on the gas outlet and/or a level control valve is installed on the liquid outlet that respond to a differential pressure transmitter signal

Active separation: A slug suppression valve is installed at the inlet to the GLCC along with gas and liquid control valves.

Fluid flows with a liquid-to-gas ratio of greater than 50 barrels of liquid per MMscf of gas are the preferred feed for the GLCC. The GLCC can be used successfully in any number of services.

Among these are:

	Inlet or Wellhead Test Separators
	Two-phase Production Separators
	Flash separators before oil treaters or water treating equipment

Vessel debottlenecking by removing excess gas from the flow stream in advance of the problem vessel