Research On Heating And Flowing Behavior Of Highly Viscous And Solid Crude Oil Within The Oil Tank In Sunken Ships

With the demand of energy and bulk cargo trading, Sea transportation has become increasingly important. At the same time, the sunken ship accident frequently happened. If the problem does not been solved properly, it will cause serious environmental pollution, and meanwhile, jeopardize the security of the sea, cause a large number of property loss and personal injury. When the oil tank shell has not broken, we should pump the oil into the rescue ship by underwater oil recovery equipment, in case the oil spill accident in the process of sunken ship floating. And, the oil recovery work of highly viscous and solid crude oil need to reheat, at present, it is mostly based on experience and there is few related research. For these reasons, this paper take the analysis on heating and flowing behavior of highly viscous and solid crude oil within the oil tank in sunken ships.First, with the use of CFD method and Software FLUENT, this paper build the geometry model on highly viscous crude oil area of oil tank to put up numerical simulation of the temperature drop course, obtain the distribution chart of velocity and temperature, get the temperature drop law in seawater of different temperature. Then, build the geometry model on reheat system to put up numerical simulation of the temperature rise course. The influences of locations of the heating tubes, heat flux, storage height on the heating time are analyzed. Also, the melting process of solid crude oil is numerically simulated by using solidification/melting model. Taking latent heat of wax crystallization and natural convection into account, liquid fraction with the change of time under different heat flux is obtained and phase change interface position is still calculated.Through the study of this paper, the required reheating time law of the oil of sunken ships in different condition is obtained, so that it can provide theoretical basis for underwater oil recovery in sunken ships salvage work.