An alternate method to API RP 14E for predicting solids erosion in multiphase flow

One commonly used method for determining oil and gas production velocities is to limit production rates based on the American Petroleum Institute Reco mmended Practice 14E (API RP 14E). This guideline contains an equation to c alculate an "erosional" or a threshold velocity, presumably a flow velocity that is safe to operate. The equation only considers one factor, the densi ty of the medium, and does not consider many other factors that can contrib ute to erosion in multiphase flow pipelines. Thus, factors such as fluid pr operties, flow geometry, type of metal, sand production rate and size distr ibution, and flow composition are not accounted for, In the present paper, a method is presented that has been developed with the goal of improving th e procedure by accounting for many of the physical variables including flui d properties, sand production rate and size, and flowstream composition tha t affect sand erosion. The results from the model are compared with several experimental results provided in the literature. Additionally, the method is applied to calculate threshold flowstream velocities for sand erosion an d the results are compared with API RP 14E. The results indicate that the f orm of the equation that is provided by the API RP 14E is not suitable for predicting a production flowstream velocity when sand is present. [S0195-07 38(00)00203-X].