Design of a High-Pressure Research Flow Loop for the Experimental Investigation of Liquid Loading in Gas Wells

Abstract

Liquid loading in producing gas wells is the inability of the produced gas to remove produced liquids from the wellbore. A review of existing flow loops worldwide revealed that specialized areas of research such as liquid loading in gas wells are still lacking dedicated test facilities. This project presents the design of a new dedicated facility to be located at the TowerLab at the Richardson building with adequate operating conditions to reproduce the flow regimes encountered prior to and after the onset of liquid loading in gas wells. The facility consists of a compressed air system, pipelines for air and water, a pressure vessel containing glass beads, an injection manifold, and flow control and monitoring devices. Our results show that three compressors working in parallel is the most technical and economic configuration for the TowerLab based on the overall costs provided by the supplier, the footprint but most importantly the flexibility. The design of the pressure vessel required a cylindrical body with top and bottom welded-flat head covers with multiple openings to minimize its weight. The pipelines connecting major equipment and injection manifold located at the pressure vessel were selected based on the superficial velocities for air and water. These values also showed the need for independent injection using two manifolds instead of commingling flow through a tee joint. The use of digital pressure gauges with an accuracy of 0.05 to 25% and coriolis or vortex meters to measure air flowrate is also suggested. For the water line, installation of turbine meters results in the most economic approach. iv DEDICATION To my parents, sister and my entire family, for their unlimited support and encouragement throughout this work v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my advisors Dr. Gioia Falcone and Dr. Catalin Teodoriu for giving me the opportunity to be a part of their team and this project, for their encouragement to learn and to provide meaningful results. Their knowledge and suggestions were fundamental throughout this work. Thanks also go to the gas well unloading group: He Zhang, Gopi Chava, Meher Surendra, Han-Young Park and Fouad Solomon for being such a great team to work with. Thank you to my very good friends, Jerome Rajnauth and Arnaldo Espinel with whom I shared not only knowledge but most importantly created a good friendship. I would also like to thank the department faculty and staff for making my time at Texas

Dynamic Simulation Approach for Liquid Loading in Horizontal Gas Well X Field Indonesia

“…Planning the right deliquification technique plays a very important role in reducing the risk of implementation failure and returns on investment in wells produced. [1] Turner et al (1969) observed the characteristics of liquid loading in a number of wells in the US onshore field using 106 data points. They found that a freefalling particle in a fluid medium will reach a terminal velocity.…”