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<p>Pipeline gelling presents a prevalent challenge in crude oil transportation. While hot water injection is widely employed to facilitate oil melting and transport, the intense shear stress from high-velocity flows frequently induces solid-liquid interfacial instability, yielding an irregular wavy interface. Currently, the complex effects of this morphology on heat transfer and flow dynamics remain poorly understood. To address this gap, this study establishes a three-dimensional numerical model coupling the Volume of Fluid (VOF) interface tracking method with the SST k-ω turbulence model to investigate the melting heat transfer and flow behaviors of gelled crude oil with a wavy interface. The results indicate that wave-induced near-wall disturbances effectively improve convective heat transfer compared to a flat interface, reducing the melting time by 20.7% at a wave number of <i>N</i> = 8. Spatiotemporal evaluation of the local Nusselt number (Nu) reveals a characteristic transition from impingement-dominated convective heat transfer with a peak Nu exceeding 150 to standard boundary-layer-dominated transfer (Nu ≈ 20–40) as the interface flattens. Furthermore, under high-temperature conditions (70 ℃), dimensionless analysis demonstrates that the characteristic Weber number exceeds the theoretical critical threshold of 10–12. This confirms that the enhanced hydrodynamic inertial forces successfully overcome the interfacial tension constraints, thereby triggering shear-induced droplet stripping at the leeward side. Overall, this study elucidates the complex interaction mechanisms between interfacial morphology and the shear flow field, providing a theoretical reference for optimizing the transport efficiency of waxy crude oil pipelines.</p>

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Melting dynamics and interfacial evolution of wavy gelled crude oil during hot water transportation

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年8月3日

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  • Jingjing Hou,
  • Xiaoyan Liu,
  • Jinwei Wang,
  • Xinggan Lu,
  • Kun Jiang,
  • Hao Wang

摘要

Pipeline gelling presents a prevalent challenge in crude oil transportation. While hot water injection is widely employed to facilitate oil melting and transport, the intense shear stress from high-velocity flows frequently induces solid-liquid interfacial instability, yielding an irregular wavy interface. Currently, the complex effects of this morphology on heat transfer and flow dynamics remain poorly understood. To address this gap, this study establishes a three-dimensional numerical model coupling the Volume of Fluid (VOF) interface tracking method with the SST k-ω turbulence model to investigate the melting heat transfer and flow behaviors of gelled crude oil with a wavy interface. The results indicate that wave-induced near-wall disturbances effectively improve convective heat transfer compared to a flat interface, reducing the melting time by 20.7% at a wave number of N = 8. Spatiotemporal evaluation of the local Nusselt number (Nu) reveals a characteristic transition from impingement-dominated convective heat transfer with a peak Nu exceeding 150 to standard boundary-layer-dominated transfer (Nu ≈ 20–40) as the interface flattens. Furthermore, under high-temperature conditions (70 ℃), dimensionless analysis demonstrates that the characteristic Weber number exceeds the theoretical critical threshold of 10–12. This confirms that the enhanced hydrodynamic inertial forces successfully overcome the interfacial tension constraints, thereby triggering shear-induced droplet stripping at the leeward side. Overall, this study elucidates the complex interaction mechanisms between interfacial morphology and the shear flow field, providing a theoretical reference for optimizing the transport efficiency of waxy crude oil pipelines.