Dynamics of oil separation from sand particle moving in the water at the Reynolds number of 500

Abstract

This work represents studies of bitumen separation from a single bitumen-coated sand particle moving in a stream of water at the particle Reynolds number of 500. The transient dynamics of separation processes are calculated numerically using a three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics based model coupled with the combination of level set and volume of fluid models, known as the coupled level set volume of fluid model. The sand particle diameter is 10−4 m. The bitumen layer thickness comprises 10% of the particle diameter. The simulation results show that 20% of bitumen is removed during the onset of the water flow around the particle. Further, a bitumen layer is transformed into a bitumen tail with 77% of the original bitumen volume.