A Solution to Sand Production from Natural Gas Hydrate Deposits with Radial Wells: Combined Gravel Packing and Sand Screen

Sand production is one of the main problems restricting the safe, efficient and sustainable exploitation of marine natural gas hydrate. To explore the sand-control effects of gravel packing, experiments that simulate hydrate extraction in the water-rich environment were conducted with designed hydrate synthesis and exploitation devices. Three sand control completion methods, including 120 mesh sand screen, 400 mesh sand screen, 120 mesh sand screen combined with gravel packing, are adopted. Sand and gas production rates were compared under different well types and sand control completion methods. Results show that the gas production modes of radial wells and vertical wells are almost the same at the same time due to the small experimental scale and high permeability. The sand production of the vertical well with gravel packing combined with a sand-control screen is 50% lower than that of the vertical well with sand-control screens only. Radial well with gravel packing combined with sand-control screens produced 87% less sand than screen mesh alone. The cumulative gas production and recovery rates of a radial well with the composite sand control method are better than those without gravel packing in the same development time.

Experimental study on water level and absorption capacity in a radial well flow in a loess area

In this paper, the theoretical basis for flow calculation in an injection well was discussed. It proposed that the flow rate of an injection well could be calculated referring to pumping theory and method. A mathematical model of the rising curve of water level around a radial well was established and the equation for calculating the rising curve was given. The calculation equations selected for the water absorption capacity of injection wells were explained and examples were verified and compared. The results indicated that, under the same injection conditions, the water level value calculated by the analysis method was slightly larger, but the error between the analysis method and the semi-theoretical and semi-empirical methods was small. In the processes of steady flow injection and unsteady flow injection, there was a small difference of water absorption capacity, and the former was slightly larger. The measured values of water absorption capacity were only about one-third of the calculated values based on pumping theory. Overall, the analytical solution method for predicting the rising curve of water level has priority in well injection. The semi-theoretical and semi-empirical equation for calculating water absorption capacity sifted first has priority in steady flow injection, the equation sifted second has priority in unsteady flow injection.

Modelling of multi-lateral well geometries for geothermal applications

Well inflow modelling in different numerical simulation approaches are compared for a multi-lateral well. Specifically radial wells will be investigated, which can be created using Radial Jet Drilling (RJD). In this technique, powerful hydraulic jets are used to create small diameter laterals (25–50 mm) of limited length (up to 100 m) from a well. The laterals, also called radials, leave the backbone at a 90∘ angle. In this study we compare three numerical simulators and a semi-analytical tool for calculating inflow of a radial well. The numerical simulators are FE approaches (CSMP and GOLEM) and an FV approach with explicit well model (Eclipse®). A series of increasingly complex well configurations is simulated, including one with inflow from a fault. Although all simulators generally are reasonably close in terms of the total well flow (deviations < 4 % for the homogeneous cases), the distribution of the flow over the different parts of the well can vary significantly. Also, the FE approaches are more sensitive to grid size when the flow is dominated by radial flow to the well since they do not include a dedicated well model. In the FE approaches, lower dimensional elements (1-D for the well and 2-D for the faults) were superimposed into a 3-D space. In case the flow is dominated by fracture flow, the results from the FV approach in Eclipse deviates from the FE methods.