(7)Equipment Selection & Design.

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Oil Retention Time, to = 10 min

Water Retention Time, tw = 10 min
The minimum size of the water droplet that must be removed from the oil and the
minimum size of the oil droplet that must be removed from the water to achieve a certain
oil and water quality at the separator exit depend largely on the operating conditions and
fluid properties. Now the minimum water droplet size to be removed from the oil is
assumed to be 500 µm. Now first the factor Aw/A is calculated by the formula
Aw/A= 0.5 × (Qw × tw / (Qo × to + Qw × tw)) = 0.185
From Appendix B-11 value of Ho/D against the calculated Aw/A comes out to be 0.26.
Ho,max the maximum thickness of the oil pad is calculated as
Ho,max= (1.28×10-3×to×Δγ×dm2) / µo = 10.6 m
From Ho,max, the maximum allowable vessel diameter comes out to be
Dmax= Ho,max / (Ho/D) = 40.7m

7.5.3.a Gas Capacity Constraint

Velocity of gas is calculated as
Gas Velocity, u = 1.787×10-6(Δγ) dm2/µ = 0.018 m/sec
The equation used to find the gas capacity constraint is
DL = 420 × (QgTZ / P) × {(ρg / (ρo-ρg))(Cd/dm)}0.5 = 3.87 m2

7.5.3.b Liquid Capacity/ Retention time Constraint

The equation for liquid capacity constraint is as
D2L=1.429 × (Qo × to + Qw × tw) = 60.2 m3
Investigation shows that for any selected diameter, the effective length is too
small compared to that calculated from equation for liquid capacity constraint. Therefore
the gas capacity does not govern the design.
Since liquid capacity constraint governs the design, so we take different values of
diameter which are smaller than the Dmax. After putting these values in the retention time
constraint equation and solving we get different combinations of length and diameter.
The best diameter and length combination is selected which satisfies the criteria of L/D
ratio which should be between 3 and 5. Also while selecting diameter and length
combination it is better to select longer length and smaller diameter vessel, because cost
is greatly increased by diameter, further, smaller diameter and longer length vessel is
economically better. From the above discussion we have
For liquid retention time
D(m) L(m) Ls = 4L / 3 (m) Ls/D
1.6764 21.4 28.6 17.0
1.8288 18.0 24.0 13.1
1.9812 15.3 20.5 10.3
2.1336 13.2 17.6 8.3
2.286 11.5 15.4 6.7
2.4384 10.1 13.5 5.5
2.54 9.3 12.4 4.9
2.7432 8.0 10.7 3.9
2.7686 7.9 10.5 3.8