Innovative High Efficiency Oil Burner Proves to Solve Many Environmental Challenges in Well Test Applications

Abstract

The paper discusses how a new burner can solve environmental challenges in well test applications by reducing the quantity of fallout, providing better control of the burning operation, and allowing operators to adjust to changes in the well/weather conditions. In order to conduct successful well tests, substantial amounts of oil must be brought to the surface, and in most instances, the safest and least expensive method of disposal is to burn the produced oil. A quality smoke-free burn and drip-free operation is enabled through an innovative advanced nozzle design installed in this new oil burner. The nozzle can precisely control the flow of oil and air through the burner allowing, for the first time, closure with no unburned fuel escaping. The nozzles are operated remotely and powered by an integrated pneumatic system using the combustion air supply. The system permits control over each individual nozzle, enabling operators to adapt to varying flow conditions to maintain efficient and flawless performance. A wide range of tests were conducted, including combustion zone gas sampling and fallout testing. Over a three week testing period, the new burner flawlessly executed full-scale burns and provided on-the-fly nozzle control, burner head rotation, and instant drip-free shutdowns. The new burner demonstrated its capability to shut down all ten nozzles from their full capacity in three tenths of a second with no visible unburned hydrocarbons or drips. The new burner achieved a 99.99952% fallout efficiency; this is 14.58 times more efficient than any other current oil burner product offering. In addition to the exceptional fallout efficiency, it also delivers 99.4% combustion efficiency and 99.5% destruction efficiency allowing the calculation of CO2 emission rates, which during testing was found to be 41Lbs/MMBtu. The first operation was conducted offshore in Brazil where this new burner demonstrated the capability to control, monitor, and react to changing well conditions for approximately three days without issue. It flowed in excess of 6,700 bbls, preventing a minimum of 69.48 liters of fallout from entering the sea. A total of 32 jobs were performed with the new burner system from December 2014 to January of 2018 with a 100% success rate without contamination/fallouts. The totally eliminated fallout volume, compared with the second most efficient burner system available in the market, is 2653.22 liters after burning a total of 257,490 bbl of hydrocarbons. In 60% of the field jobs, the burner was rotated to accommodate wind direction or to improve burning efficiency. If a different burner system had been used, the burner efficiency would have lessened or, in a worst case scenario, the operation could have been delayed and the well shut in until wind direction changed sufficiently to allow the burning operation.

On the One-Point Model for the Productivity Evaluation in Jingbian Sector of Yan’an Gas Field

“…With the time being of production, wells with low productivity continue to appear (Yan et al, 2021), which leads to the slow recovery of shut-in pressure of gas wells; this further brings difficulty to the evaluation of singlewell productivity. The one-point well test method only requires stable production and flowing pressure under one single-well constraint (Wakabayashi and McGouldrick, 2020), which is applied in China widely. The one-point method can significantly reduce the workload of well tests, reduce the burden of production, and provide theoretical evidence for the production allocation based on the gas productivity equations.…”