Flow Assurance Begins with Downhole Insulation

Lively, Glenn

doi:10.4043/14118-ms

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 11 publications

(16 reference statements)

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“…Within the specific case of downhole insulation, vacuuminsulated tubing (VIT) has been the favoured option (Lively 2002). Despite its excellent thermal behaviour, its cost remains a concern.…”

Section: Insulators' (Heat-proofing) Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Preventing and removing wax deposition inside vertical wells: a review

Sousa

Matos

Guerreiro³

2019

J Petrol Explor Prod Technol

101

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Wax deposition is one of the most challenging flow assurance issues in oil production processes. The related problems span from reservoirs to refineries, but their consequences can be particularly challenging when the affected area is difficult to reach, such as producing wells. The wax deposition in the areas adjoining the bore, the bore face, the tubing string and the pump is the result of the cooling effect, which occurs when the oil flows from the high-pressure reservoir into the wellbore to the surface. During the depressurization the oil expands, and the heat is drawn from the oil. The temperature loss induces crystallization of the wax and the subsequent plugging of the well. In this case, wax deposition leads to the decrease of well flow rates and eventually causes total blockage. This paper sums up the main technologies applied to prevent or remediate the wax deposition formed inside the wells. A comprehensive review was presented, and the main advantages and disadvantages of these techniques were highlighted. For instance, the mechanical removal is still a widely used technique for solving wax problems inside wells, despite being a costly procedure; heating is another frequent used technique, but it can cause formation damage; bacterial treatments still require further studies on site conditions; changing the operational conditions may be undesirable due to other management field circumstances; coating and insulating materials generally are not fully efficient, being required to implement complementary techniques; cold flow was only tested in pipelines and it was not applicable to wells; finally WIT, electric and magnetic field or oscillatory motion are practical applications that have not been fully proven yet. Keywords Wax deposition inside wells • Wax prevention techniques and wax removal techniques

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Section: Insulators' (Heat-proofing) Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Preventing and removing wax deposition inside vertical wells: a review

Sousa

Matos

Guerreiro³

2019

J Petrol Explor Prod Technol

101

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“…However, in some conditions, the induced temperature redistribution can impact the wellbore integrity and/or its intended functions. Wellbore failure can occur as a result of annular pressure buildup (APB), caused by heated annuli fluid thermal expansion (Ferreira et al 2012;Vargo et al 2003;Azzola et al 2007), and the hydrate formation because of produced hydrocarbon temperature loss resulting in flow assurance issues (Feeney 1999;Lively 2002). In such cases, temperature management is required to control the temperature changes at an acceptable level to protect the fluid in the tubing or to protect its outside surrounding components.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Over the past three decades, VIT has proven to be an effective thermal isolation management tool in increasingly challenging environments, including deepwater challenges, steam challenges, and onshore challenges (Purdy and Cheyne 1991;Azzola et al 2007;Bradford et al 2004;Ellis et al 2004;Ellis et al 2004;Ferreira et al 2012;Li et al 2010;Singh et al 2007;Pattillo et al 2004;Lively 2002;Feeney 1999;Karra et al 2014;Kutzak and Gunn 1989;Nowinka et al 2005;Gonzales and Bajwa 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Heat Transfer Modeling of Wellbore with Vacuum-Insulated-Tubing (VIT)

Kang

Samuel

Gonzales

et al. 2015

Day 1 Mon, November 23, 2015

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Wellbore heat transfer induces wellbore temperature redistribution and can impact wellbore integrity and the ability of the well to perform its required functions effectively as the design intended. Vacuuminsulated-tubing (VIT) is purposed to reduce wellbore tubing fluid heat loss to protect the tubing fluid or the outside components. Accurate prediction of the wellbore operating temperature during the design phase is essential especially for a VIT well because of its natural difference from the regular pipe.VIT pipe consists of a vacuum section and connector section. The vacuum section has a much better insulation effect than that of the connector, inducing ЉnonuniformЉ heat transfer. This generates significant annulus temperature spikes along the axial direction; up to 50°F in half VIT unit length, 20 ft in field observation ). Conventionally, axial temperature gradient is ignored with regular pipe because it is negligible compared with radial temperature gradient. This is no longer applicable for VIT because these temperature spikes enhance free convection significantly. This paper presents a novel wellbore heat transfer model to provide accurate temperature prediction for a VIT well.Operators use a higher averaged overall thermal conductivity values over VIT because it yields acceptable conservative incremental pressure in annular pressure buildup (APB) calculation, which matches their field observations. There is still uncertainty about modeling with different thermal conductivity values for the VIT vacuum section and connector in conventional commercial simulators that produce high-temperature spikes and relative unreasonable low incremental pressure. Field case study results with this new model show that compared with conventional simulator results the wellbore average temperature increases and the spikes amplitude in the temperature distribution decreases. In addition, whether the connection is insulated or non-insulated plays a critical role in the overall VIT performance. Good connection insulation will increase the overall insulation effect significantly.Literature surveys show few studies on modeling wellbore heat transfer with the enhanced free convection effect inherent to VIT. A conventional wellbore temperature simulator ignores this effect and underestimates the overall wellbore temperature. This paper provides a novel solution model for VIT wellbore temperature prediction, which will be integrated into a commercial advanced casing and tubing design software platform.

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Integrating, Predicting and Preventing Flow Assurance Issues—A Review

Khanna¹,

Patwardhan²

2019

Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering

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Flow Assurance Begins with Downhole Insulation

Cited by 8 publications

References 11 publications

Preventing and removing wax deposition inside vertical wells: a review

Preventing and removing wax deposition inside vertical wells: a review

Heat Transfer Modeling of Wellbore with Vacuum-Insulated-Tubing (VIT)

Integrating, Predicting and Preventing Flow Assurance Issues—A Review

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