ARCHIMEDE Project

Designing

The originality of the ARCHIMEDE loop is to create a laminar flowing without any pump. For this, the differential pressure is generated by the way of a gaslift riser.

HORIZONTAL LOOP
The flow section is a large streamer of 36.1 m long, 1.02 cm internal diameter and constant slope of 4°. The streamer is composed of 3 identical levels. Each level is composed of 2 long straight pipes of 4 m long, 2 short sections of 0.3 m long, and four elbows of 0.5 m radius.. A global pressure drop measurement is performed between the entry and the exit.

TEMPERATURE CONTROL
The pipes are maintained at constant temperature by means of 9 external cooling jackets of 1.5 m long built on the 1shell-and-1tube principle. On the three levels constituting the streamer, 7 temperature probes monitor the fluid temperature profile. The total cooling power is 3 kW.

GAS LIFT
The exit of the flow section is connected to a gas lift riser (10.6 m long and 1.73 cm internal diameter) in which gas coming from a separator located at the top of the column is re-injected. The gas lift temperature is controlled using 3 heat exchangers of 2 m long. A differential pressure transmitter monitors the pressure drop along this section. A temperature probe is mounted at the exit of the gas lift. The gas lift ensures both the flow driving force and the gas absorption.

GAS SEPARATOR
The gas separator is a tube of 2 inches external diameter and 2 m height. The gas lift tube enter into it on an height of 1.5 m. The geyser exiting the gas lift column is separated into its different phases : gas phase goes up whereas liquid and solid phases go down and enter the downcomer pipe. Gas is then flowed to a gas booster unit.

DOWNCOMER PIPE
The input of the flow section is connected to the descending pipe (downcomer) (8.3 m height, 9.1 m long and internal diameter of 1.73 cm, plus a section of 0.39 m in internal diameter of 1.02 cm) coming from the separator and transporting the fluid after gas separation. The downcomer pipe is equipped with two heat exchangers of 2 m long, a temperature probe and a pressure drop sensor. A Coriolis mass-flow-meter is mounted on the downcomer pipe (Micro Motion R050)

GAS BOOSTER UNIT
The gas booster unit consists of two ballasts in which liquid water is flowing from one to the other and inversely. One of the ballast acts as a sucker (sucking gas from the top of the separator) and the other one as a pusher (pushing gas at the bottom of the gas lift riser).

COLD POINT
A parallel one meter pipe of ¼ inch diameter is mounted on an elbow of the loop. It is temperature controlled down to –20°C and it acts as a cold point to initiate crystals nucleation.