Oil Refining Centrifuge

Background: David Park from CentriCrude Inc was the sponsor that brought a problem to my group to work on for capstone. He had a design for an oil refining centrifuge that would increase the amount oil collected and reduce the amount of water wasted.

Capstone: During capstone, our group built a scaled model of David’s design for table top testing. Using dimensional analysis, we were able to keep all aspects of David’s design proportional.

One of my responsibilities was flow control. We needed to have a steady flow rate of 1 gpm during our tests. In order to achieve this flow rate, I choose a circulating pump that was inline with a ball valve to control how fast or slow we wanted the flow. The flow rate was observed by the flow meter that had a digital display.

My other responsibility was particulate integration. To represent the particulate that are in crude oil, I chose quartz sand to be introduced into the system. Using a syringe we injected the sand into the flow and watched how it moved through the feed pipe.

Research: In my research, I am going to further dive into experiments regarding how much particulate sticks to the outer walls of the feed pipe. Ideally there will be no residue, but due to centripetal force, David is afraid that there will be a large amount of sand left over.