Twister SWIRL Valve

Twister SWIRL Valve

swirl1.jpgTwister BV has successfully developed and tested a new gas processing product – the Twister SWIRL Valve. The SWIRL Valve improves the separation of two-phase flow across a pressure reduction valve such as a choke valve, JT valve or control valve. This in turn maximises the liquid separation efficiency of downstream separators, which can then be translated into a reduced pressure drop in a JT-LTS system, smaller separators and/or more flow throughput.

The Twister SWIRL™ valve improves the HC dew pointing performance of existing JT-LTS plants by:

- increasing plant flow capacity
- reducing ΔP required for JT cooling
- reducing hydrocarbon dew point
- reducing glycol carry-over

The Twister SWIRL valve avoids turbulent mixing of fluids

swirl6.gifValves are used in the oil & gas industry to control pressure, temperature and flow. In many cases fluids will expand in the valve, once sufficient pressure drop is created over the valve. This throttling process normally results in a flashed liquid or a condensed gas, which needs to be separated afterwards.
A side effect of throttling in choke valves is an intensive mixing of the gas and liquid phases, which can diminish the efficiency of the separators downstream of these chokes.
The Twister SWIRL™ valve is a modified choke valve design, which minimizes the mixing of gas and liquid phases and enables agglomeration of the dispersion present after pressure let down. The SWIRL valve uses the available free pressure to create a strong rotational motion in the fluid resulting in immediate segregation of the formed phases.

The Twister SWIRL valve enlarges the mean diameter of the dispersed phase

Since most separators – such as gravity separators, cyclone separators and filter separators - can be characterized by a typical separable diameter (that is, a cut-off diameter), the improvement of the SWIRL valve in conjunction with a separator is illustrated below. Compared to a traditional valve, the SWIRL valve enlarges the mean diameter of droplets and bubbles with at least a factor of 5. Only droplets with a diameter smaller than 0.2 micron will not be affected by the SWIRL valve.

SWIRL Valve applications
SWIRL valves can be applied in the following production scenarios:

  • Joule Thomson expansion of gas flows
  • Flashing oil / condensate flows in stabilization processes
  • Oil/water separation processes

When applied to existing facilities, the application of SWIRL valve technology offers:

  • Flow debottlenecking of separator trains
  • Reduced pressure drop in JT-LTS processes
  • Less liquid carry-over / gas carry under
  • Higher liquid recovery, less losses of chemicals