Summary
When a blowout oil/gas well catches fire, usually a flow tube is used to detach the fire from the wellhead and provide appropriate conditions for operating team members to approach the well and install the blowout-preventer (BOP) cap. Using the flow tube above the wellhead creates powerful suction around the tube that may jeopardize the safety of crew members. To reduce the power of suction around the well, a new perforated flow tube instead of simple flow tube was introduced. To understand the effect of this new type of flow tube, modeling and simulation of the flow field around the blowout well were performed for both simple and perforated types of flow tube with Fluent 6.3.26 (2003) and Gambit 2.3.16 (2003) softwares. Different parameters around the well mouth were compared in both designs. The results showed that using the perforated flow tube decreases the vacuum around the well by 33% compared with the simple flow tubes. Thus, application of the perforated flow tube can be recommended in well-control operations for safety measures.
Numerical Investigation of Flow Field Near the Exhaust Opening Indoor