Numerical Investigation on Multiphase Erosion-Corrosion Problem of Steel of Apparatus at a Well Outlet in Natural Gas Production

2018 ◽  
Vol 140 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhang Jianwen ◽  
Jiang Aiguo ◽  
Xin Yanan ◽  
He Jianyun

The erosion-corrosion problem of gas well pipeline under gas–liquid two-phase fluid flow is crucial for the natural gas well production, where multiphase transport phenomena expose great influences on the feature of erosion-corrosion. A Eulerian–Eulerian two-fluid flow model is applied to deal with the three-dimensional gas–liquid two-phase erosion-corrosion problem and the chemical corrosion effects of the liquid droplets dissolved with CO2 on the wall are taken into consideration. The amount of erosion and chemical corrosion is predicted. The erosion-corrosion feature at different parts including expansion, contraction, step, screw sections, and bends along the well pipeline is numerically studied in detail. For dilute droplet flow, the interaction between flexible water droplets and pipeline walls under different operations is treated by different correlations according to the liquid droplet Reynolds numbers. An erosion-corrosion model is set up to address the local corrosion and erosion induced by the droplets impinging on the pipe surfaces. Three typical cases are studied and the mechanism of erosion-corrosion for different positions is investigated. It is explored by the numerical simulation that the erosion-corrosion changes with the practical production conditions: Under lower production rate, chemical corrosion is the main cause for erosion-corrosion; under higher production rate, erosion predominates greatly; and under very high production rate, erosion becomes the main cause. It is clarified that the parts including connection site of oil pipe, oil pipe set, and valve are the places where erosion-corrosion origins and becomes serious. The failure mechanism is explored and good comparison with field measurement is achieved.

2018 ◽  
Vol 67 ◽  
pp. 03009
Author(s):  
Abdul Wahid ◽  
Muhamad Taufiq Hidayat

Many problems often occur in producing natural gas from well. Due to the existence of water content in natural gas or water drive mechanism, liquid (especially water) is also produced from gas well, following natural gas production. When gas critical rate is higher than gas production rate due to reservoir pressure decline, it will cause liquid accumulation in the bottom of well, avoiding natural gas to be well lifted from well bottom to surface. It is liquid loading. Chemical injection of 0.4 liquid that consists of ethoxy sulphate, alkane sulphonate, and petroleum sulphonate is effective to overcome liquid loading in natural gas well thus causing an increase in natural gas production by 57%.


SPE Journal ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (04) ◽  
pp. 397-407 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mashhad Mousa Fahes ◽  
Abbas Firoozabadi

Summary Wettability of two types of sandstone cores, Berea (permeability on the order of 600 md), and a reservoir rock (permeability on the order of 10 md), is altered from liquid-wetting to intermediate gas-wetting at a high temperature of 140C. Previous work on wettability alteration to intermediate gas-wetting has been limited to 90C. In this work, chemicals previously used at 90C for wettability alteration are found to be ineffective at 140C. New chemicals are used which alter wettability at high temperatures. The results show that:wettability could be permanently altered from liquid-wetting to intermediate gas-wetting at high reservoir temperatures,wettability alteration has a substantial effect on increasing liquid mobility at reservoir conditions,wettability alteration results in improved gas productivity, andwettability alteration does not have a measurable effect on the absolute permeability of the rock for some chemicals. We also find the reservoir rock, unlike Berea, is not strongly water-wet in the gas/water/rock system. Introduction A sharp reduction in gas well deliverability is often observed in many low-permeability gas-condensate reservoirs even at very high reservoir pressure. The decrease in well deliverability is attributed to condensate accumulation (Hinchman and Barree 1985; Afidick et al. 1994) and water blocking (Engineer 1985; Cimolai et al. 1983). As the pressure drops below the dewpoint, liquid accumulates around the wellbore in high saturations, reducing gas relative permeability (Barnum et al. 1995; El-Banbi et al. 2000); the result is a decrease in the gas production rate. Several techniques have been used to increase gas well deliverability after the initial decline. Hydraulic fracturing is used to increase absolute permeability (Haimson and Fairhurst 1969). Solvent injection is implemented in order to remove the accumulated liquid (Al-Anazi et al. 2005). Gas deliverability often increases after the reduction of the condensate saturation around the wellbore. In a successful methanol treatment in Hatter's Pond field in Alabama (Al-Anazi et al. 2005), after the initial decline in well deliverability by a factor of three to five owing to condensate blocking, gas deliverability increased by a factor of two after the removal of water and condensate liquids from the near-wellbore region. The increased rates were, however, sustained for a period of 4 months only. The approach is not a permanent solution to the problem, because the condensate bank will form again. On the other hand, when hydraulic fracturing is used by injecting aqueous fluids, the cleanup of water accumulation from the formation after fracturing is essential to obtain an increased productivity. Water is removed in two phases: immiscible displacement by gas, followed by vaporization by the expanding gas flow (Mahadevan and Sharma 2003). Because of the low permeability and the wettability characteristics, it may take a long time to perform the cleanup; in some cases, as little as 10 to 15% of the water load could be recovered (Mahadevan and Sharma 2003; Penny et al. 1983). Even when the problem of water blocking is not significant, the accumulation of condensate around the fracture face when the pressure falls below dewpoint pressure could result in a reduction in the gas production rate (Economides et al. 1989; Sognesand 1991; Baig et al. 2005).


2009 ◽  
Vol 131 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
R. L. J. Fernandes ◽  
B. A. Fleck ◽  
T. R. Heidrick ◽  
L. Torres ◽  
M. G. Rodriguez

Experimental investigation of drag reduction in vertical two-phase annular flow is presented. The work is a feasibility test for applying drag reducing additives (DRAs) in high production-rate gas-condensate wells where friction in the production tubing limits the production rate. The DRAs are intended to reduce the overall pressure gradient and thereby increase the production rate. Since such wells typically operate in the annular-entrained flow regime, the gas and liquid velocities were chosen such that the experiments were in a vertical two-phase annular flow. The drag reducers had two main effects on the flow. As expected, they reduced the frictional component of the pressure gradient by up to 74%. However, they also resulted in a significant increase in the liquid holdup by up to 27%. This phenomenon is identified as “DRA-induced flooding.” Since the flow was vertical, the increase in the liquid holdup increased the hydrostatic component of the pressure gradient by up to 25%, offsetting some of reduction in the frictional component of the pressure gradient. The DRA-induced flooding was most pronounced at the lowest gas velocities. However, the results show that in the annular flow the net effect will generally be a reduction in the overall pressure gradient by up to 82%. The findings here help to establish an envelope of operations for the application of multiphase drag reduction in vertical flows and indicate the conditions where a significant net reduction of the pressure gradient may be expected.


2014 ◽  
Vol 884-885 ◽  
pp. 104-107
Author(s):  
Zhi Jun Li ◽  
Ji Qiang Li ◽  
Wen De Yan

For the water-sweeping gas reservoir, especially when the water-body is active, water invasion can play positive roles in maintaining formation pressure and keeping the gas well production. But when the water-cone break through and towards the well bottom, suffers from the influencing of gas-water two phase flows, permeability of gas phase decrease sharply and will have a serious impact on the production performance of the gas well. Moreover, the time when the water-cone breakthrough will directly affect the final recovery of the gas wells, therefore, the numerical simulation method is used to conduct the research on the key influencing factors of water-invasion performance for the gas wells with bottom-water, which is the basis of the mechanical model for the typical gas wells with bottom-water. It indicate that as followings: (1) the key influencing factors of water-invasion performance for the gas wells with bottom-water are those, such as the open degree of the gas beds, well gas production and the amount of Kv/Kh value; and (2) the barrier will be in charge of great significance on the water-controlling for the bottom water gas wells, and its radius is the key factor to affect water-invasion performance for the bottom water gas wells where the barriers exist nearby.


Lithosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (Special 4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Suran Wang ◽  
Yuhu Bai ◽  
Bingxiang Xu ◽  
Yanzun Li ◽  
Ling Chen ◽  
...  

Abstract Two-phase (gas+water) flow is quite common in tight sandstone gas reservoirs during flowback and early-time production periods. However, many analytical models are restricted to single-phase flow problems and three-dimensional fracture characteristics are seldom considered. Numerical simulations are good choices for this problem, but it is time consuming in gridding and simulating. This paper presents a comprehensive hybrid model to characterize two-phase flow behaviour and predict the production performance of a fractured tight gas well with a three-dimensional discrete fracture. In this approach, the hydraulic fracture is discretized into several panels and the transient flow equation is solved by the finite difference method numerically. A three-dimensional volumetric source function and superposition principle are deployed to capture the flow behaviour in the reservoir analytically. The transient responses are obtained by coupling the flow in the reservoir and three-dimensional discrete fracture dynamically. The accuracy and practicability of the proposed model are validated by the numerical simulation result. The results indicate that the proposed model is highly efficient and precise in simulating the gas/water two-phase flow and evaluating the early-time production performance of fractured tight sandstone gas wells considering a three-dimensional discrete fracture. The results also show that the gas production rate will be overestimated without considering the two-phase flow in the hydraulic fracture. In addition, the influences of fracture permeability, fracture half-length, and matrix permeability on production performance are significant. The gas production rate will be higher with larger fracture permeability at the early production period, but the production curves will merge after fracturing fluid flows back. A larger fracture half-length and matrix permeability can enhance the gas production rate.


2022 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hao Li ◽  
Genbo Peng

CO2 foam fracturing fluid is widely used in unconventional oil and gas production because of its easy flowback and low damage to the reservoir. Nowadays, the fracturing process of CO2 foam fracturing fluid injected by coiled tubing is widely used. However, the small diameter of coiled tubing will cause a large frictional pressure loss in the process of fluid flow, which is not beneficial to the development of fracturing construction. In this paper, the temperature and pressure calculation model of gas, liquid, and solid three-phase fluid flow in the wellbore under annulus injection is established. The model accuracy is verified by comparing the calculation results with the existing gas, solid, and gas and liquid two-phase model of CO2 fracturing. The calculation case of this paper shows that compared with the tubing injection method, the annulus injection of CO2 foam fracturing fluid reduces the friction by 3.06 MPa, and increases the wellbore pressure and temperature by 3.06 MPa and 5.77°C, respectively. Increasing the injection temperature, proppant volumetric concentration, and foam quality will increase the wellbore fluid temperature and make the CO2 transition to the supercritical state while increasing the mass flow rate will do the opposite. The research results verify the feasibility of the annulus injection of CO2 foam fracturing fluid and provide a reference for the improvement of CO2 foam fracturing technology in the field.


2013 ◽  
Vol 700 ◽  
pp. 213-216
Author(s):  
Ling Feng Li

In natural gas production engineering for high-temperature gas well, material selection and sizes optimization of casing material are one of the important phases. This paper presents the effect of high temperature on material strength of casing, performance matching requirements of high-strength material, sizes optimization of casing material for high-temperature gas well and examples for application.By testing, the study above is good and easy for on-the-spot application.


2013 ◽  
Vol 703 ◽  
pp. 143-146
Author(s):  
Ling Feng Li

Analysis on casing size and steel grade and application in high-temperature high-pressure gas wells are important in natural gas production engineering. This paper presents the standard casing size series, casing steel grade standard and code, types of casing steel grade, main problems in high-temperature high-pressure gas wells, using casing material suitable as solving means for high-temperature high-pressure gas well and application. For application, the study above is good and easy for on-the-spot application.


2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. J. Rudolf ◽  
T. R. Heidrick ◽  
B. A. Fleck ◽  
R. K. Ridley ◽  
V. S. V. Rajan

A new pumping technology has been developed and patented by the Alberta Research Council [1–3] to address the problem of liquid loading in natural gas wells at low, depleted pressures. This technology consists of a pump installed at the bottom of the well bore that is driven by the reservoir gas pressure to bring the produced liquids to the surface as they accumulate thereby improving gas production from shallow gas wells. The above pump concept has been investigated in two stages of research. In the first stage, a mathematical model was developed to estimate the minimum reservoir pressure required to prevent liquid build up in a gas well with either: • the reservoir pressure (and flow) itself carrying the produced liquids to the surface in a two-phase flow, or • the reservoir gas pressure powering a pumping device to carry the produced liquids to the surface in the most efficient manner possible. The objective of the second stage of this investigation was to look at the feasibility of using a reciprocating pump powered by gas pressure. In particular, the effect of the pump Area Ratio (ratio of the area being pushed by the gas to the area pushing the liquid) on the use of reservoir gas pressure was investigated. There are approximately 70,000 flowing gas wells in Western Canada and these gas wells were categorized by depth and production rate. From this list of gas wells, a typical well was chosen and its production data and well characteristics were incorporated into the mathematical model. The model was tested in both the above-mentioned investigations and the results show that there is a significant increase in the operating range when the reservoir pressure is used more efficiently to produce gas from the well. It was determined that higher pump area ratios lead to a more efficient use of reservoir pressure and for the gas well investigated in this study, an optimum area ratio of 40 was identified as the best design. The concept of multistage pumping was also investigated. The results presented are the basis for experiments presently being designed that will validate the current model of the system and allow for possible improvements.


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