Liquid Hydrocyclone Separation Systems

Abstract

Since introduction in 1983, the Vortoil* Hydrocyclone has become widely accepted in the oil and gas industry, with treating capacity of nearly 8 MM barrels of water per day sold to date. This success is largely due to the ability of this technology to consistently meet environmental discharge standards while offering significant installed weight and space savings and reduced operating costs.

However in order to maximise the benefits of hydrocyclones in cleaning oily water correct system design is critical. Lessons gained from actual field experience have been applied to full size system design, significantly improving oil removal efficiencies.

Further research has enhanced the separation efficiency of this technology in anticipation of more stringent environmental standards as well as adapting the hydrocyclone for primary separation of produced oil and water.

The applications of the hydrocyclone technology to be discussed in this paper are:

• 1) Hydrocyclone system design,

• 2) Hydrocyclone designs for enhanced separation,

• 3) Low pressure operation,

• 4) Hydrocyclone systems for primary production separation.