Numerical simulation and performance evaluation of cyclone separator with built‐in material for sand removal in gas well

The natural gas produced from gas wells contains a lot of fine gravel impurities, which causes the blockage of precision pressure regulating equipment and metering equipment. Cyclone separator is widely used in the field of natural gas surface sand removal because of its simple structure and high separation efficiency. In the field application of traditional cyclone separators, there are some problems, such as ineffective separation of fine sand particles in natural gas, low separation efficiency, and large energy loss. In order to solve the above problems, a new cyclone separator is designed in this paper; that is, a cone built‐in object is arranged inside the traditional separator to improve the separation efficiency and reduce the pressure drop. First, the feasibility of the scheme is verified by comparing the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation results of the traditional separator with the experimental results. Second, the performance indexes of the new separator and the traditional separator under specific working conditions are simulated and compared. The conclusions are as follows: compared with the traditional separator, the new separator can improve the tangential velocity of the outer cyclone. It has obvious separation effect on small particles, and the separation particle size ratio can be reduced by 47.83%. The pressure drop of the separator is reduced by 11.42%. While the separation efficiency and precision are improved, the overall performance of the separator is also improved and the energy consumption is reduced.