Norwegian Infrastructure for Multiphase Flows

Multiphase flows involve the complex interaction of fluids that affect each other. These flows are common in nature and play a crucial role in many industrial applications, such as in petroleum and carbon capture and storage (CCS) transport pipelines. From a scientific standpoint, understanding the behavior of multiphase flows is highly challenging. The most effective prediction tools currently available combine specialized models with empirical correlations derived from experiments. In this context, the Norwegian Infrastructure for Multiphase Flows plays a key role, both nationally and internationally. SINTEF and IFE have internationally unique laboratory facilities dedicated to multiphase flow research, which have been indispensable to the oil and gas industry and its value creation. This project aims to ensure that these infrastructure facilities remain state-of-the-art, fully operational, and continue to produce high-quality research, securing access to and use of the world's largest multiphase flow dataset. The process equipment and scientific instruments in the flow labs require ongoing maintenance, upgrades, and expansion. Meeting these needs will enable the infrastructure to achieve new milestones. This project will create an extensive database to support research areas such as predictive analytics and regulatory techniques. Enhancing access to cutting-edge datasets will ensure their long-term relevance and align with the oil and gas (O&G) industry's strategic objectives of production optimization and digitalization. The flow infrastructure will also be highly relevant for CO2 transport and storage, and for the O&G industry, where gas production will be particularly important in the European energy mix as we move towards a low-carbon energy system. In summary, the IMF2022 project will ensure that the flow lab facilities at IFE and SINTEF maintain their status as a world-class source of pipe flow measurements.

SINTEF and IFE have unique laboratory facilities for multiphase flow research at an international level. The laboratories perform experiments for both industrial and academic partners and are among the best in the world in their focus areas, with a capacity for multiple different measurement methods. To ensure that the laboratories can continue to deliver up-to-date experimental data to national and international research environments, the partners apply together for infrastructure funding for upgrade, maintenance, operation and expansion of existing process equipment and instrumentation. The application also includes funding to establish an extensive searchable database for large amounts of multiphase data which have been collected over decades. Providing access to the world's largest multiphase flow datasets will enable new fields of development for production optimization via digitalization and improved multiphase flow modelling. This application is based on the project outline IMF-2020.