The separation and transport of multiphase fluids, in the form of crude oil and water emulsions, is an economically and environmentally crucial process in the petroleum industry. Consequently, the development of fundamentally advanced, yet simply implemented, models for separation and transport of multiphase fluids, on the one hand, would be a valuable tool for process and system engineers tasked with developing, controlling, and optimizing subsea transport and separation processes. 
On the other hand, these models can allow researchers in industry and academia to utilize the results of particle coalescence and breakage studies for estimation of model parameters without having to construct advanced models themselves.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODEL LIBRARY

A major factor affecting multiphase separation and transportation is the size distribution of the droplets in the multiphase flow, since the settling time for particles is dependent on the particle size.  Population balance models (PBE) provide a theoretical framework to model multiphase fluid by applying fundamental advances of particle coalescence and breakage modeling in form of droplet size distributions. According to the level of complexity in them as well as physics involved, these models are solved for dynamic droplet size evolution in 0, 1, and 2 spatial dimensions. Consequently, the library structure has been arranged according to these three types of models which can cover wide applications ranging from pipe multi-phase flow to batch settler/skimmer and 3-phase separator. In this approach, these modules can be connected in different arrangements to model more complex processes providing a modular simulation capability for library users.
The computational core of the library is programmed in C++ facilitating a modular design and development using C++ powerful object-oriented features together with its memory handling and existing numerical libraries which ensure fast calculation speeds on modern computational platforms. 
Another unique feature of this model library is the portability across computational platforms that has been envisaged. It will allow the PBE models to be readily incorporated in common general-purpose or specialized simulation software packages such as MATLAB, Python and HYSYS.