Part-1

Separation Process
By – Anand Patel
Crude/Gas Separation System Overview
Main Offshore Production Facilities (key components):
 Wellhead
The oil production system begins at the wellhead, which
includes at the least one choke valve (percentage opening
determines the flowrate from the wells).

Most of the pressure drop between the well flowing tubing

head pressure (FTHP) and the separator operating pressure
occur across the choke valve.

Whenever there are two or more producing wells, a

production manifold (as well as a test manifold) is installed
to gather fluids prior to be processed.
The test manifold is provided to allow an individual well to
be tested via a test separator or a multiphase flowmeter.
The Production process
“SEPARATORS form the HEART of the production
process
• As a well stream flows from the reservoir, it experiences pressure and temperature reductions
• Gases evolve from the liquids and the well stream changes in character. The velocity of the gas carries
liquid droplets, and the liquid carries gas bubbles.

• The physical separation of these phases is one of the basic operations in the
production, processing, and treatment of oil and gas

• In oil and gas separator design, we mechanically separate from a hydrocarbon

stream the liquid and gas components that exist at a specific temperature and
pressure.

• Produced wellhead fluids are complex mixtures of different compounds of hydrogen and carbon, all
with different densities, vapor pressures, and other
physical characteristics.

Phase Diagram of a typical production system

Importance of Separator Design
Proper separator design is important because a separation vessel is
normally the initial processing vessel in any facility, and improper design
of this process component can “bottleneck” and reduce the capacity of the
entire facility.

Separators are classified as the following

- Two Phase – if they separate gas from the total liquid - Three Phase – if they also separate liquid stream into its crude oil and
stream water components.