Simulation of cuttings transport with foam in deviated wellbores using computational fluid dynamics

Rooki, Reza; Ardejani, Faramarz Doulati; Moradzadeh, Ali; Norouzi, M.

doi:10.1007/s13202-013-0077-7

Cited by 33 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…CFD studies using foam as the circulating fluid have shown that the power law model performs better than the Herschel-Bulkley model in predicting cuttings transport phenomena. (Rooki et al 2014;Rooki et al, 2015). The authors examined the effect of foam quality, foam velocity, drill pipe rotation and wellbore inclination on the cuttings transport efficiency and concluded that cuttings removal is enhanced by increasing foam quality and pipe rotation.…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

A multiparametric CFD analysis of multiphase annular flows for oil and gas drilling applications

Epelle

Gerogiorgis

2017

Computers & Chemical Engineering

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The increasing global energy demand has pushed the oil industry towards developing more innovative and advanced methods of enhancing oil recovery even under unfavourable technical and environmental conditions. The severity of many operational problems affecting the drilling and production of oil and gas wells is worsened by inaccessibility; hence, remedial efforts must be implemented from afar. One of these problems is ensuring efficient removal of formation rock cuttings with a suitable fluid, whose rheology is often complicated. Furthermore, pressure losses along the annular geometry involved, and decreased Rates of Penetration (ROP) due to accumulated drill cuttings downhole, constitute significant portions of the total energy to be supplied. Thus, the application of sophisticated modelling techniques with credible elucidation of the phase distributions (solids, liquids and gas) and prevalent flow regimes becomes essential, if adequate and economic design of a drilling program is desired. The advent of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and the growth in the available computational power to support it have provided an unprecedented opportunity to simulate and understand complex real flows, especially when experimental methods become extremely demanding. The present study employs the tool of Computational Fluid Dynamics to simulate a two-phase solid-liquid flow in an annulus based on the analysis of cuttings concentration, pressure drop profiles, axial fluid, and solid velocities as a function of several drilling parameters: drill pipe eccentricity, inclination, drill pipe rotation, ROP and fluid rheology. Special emphasis is however, placed on the impact of changing hole eccentricity on cuttings transport efficiency. The suitability of the Eulerian-Eulerian (EE) multiphase tracking scheme in modelling systems of high volume fractions is fully utilised in this work. A non-Newtonian (power law) fluid model with well-described flow parameters is implemented, considering a uniform cuttings size distribution (3 mm). A commercial CFD software (ANSYS FLUENT TM 17.1) has been used; the descriptive and predictive potential of the CFD software has been confirmed on account of the reasonable agreement with previously published experimental data (a relative error of less than 11% is achieved), as illustrated by the corresponding sensitivity plots. This multi-parametric CFD analysis study of multiphase cutting transport during drilling applications has confirmed that fluid velocity, hole inclination and annular eccentricity are the most influential factors governing the cuttings transport efficiency.2

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Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

A multiparametric CFD analysis of multiphase annular flows for oil and gas drilling applications

Epelle

Gerogiorgis

2017

Computers & Chemical Engineering

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“…Parameters such as annular flow rate, rate of penetration, fluid density, effective fluid viscosity, cuttings size, cuttings density, well inclination and pipe/hole eccentricity play leading roles in cuttings transport performance of drilling fluid (Ozbayoglu et al 2004;Stan & Avram 2014). In the same vein, other factors such as fluid flow regime and pipe rotation have also been observed to have a great impact on drilled cuttings transport in vertical, deviated, and horizontal wellbores Ozbayoglu et al 2008;Rooki et al 2014;Tomren et al 1986). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving the Cuttings Transport Performance of Water-based Mud Through the Use of Polypropylene Beads

Onuoha¹,

Ismail²,

Piroozian³

et al. 2015

JSM

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“…The kinetic theory modelling for interparticle collisions, extended from the kinetic theory of gases, is applicable to dense particulate systems where the transport of the particle phase is dominated by inter-particle collisions (Fan and Zhu, 2005). However, the most common method of analysis of cuttings transport phenomena is the RANS equations implemented within the Eulerian framework (Bilgesu et al 2002;Bilgesu et al 2007;Mishra, 2007;Sorgun, 2010;Ofei et al 2014;Rooki et al 2014;Rooki et al 2015;Heydari et al 2017). These investigations majorly evaluate the impact of several drilling variables on the efficiency of cuttings transport with respect to the cuttings volume fraction.…”

Section: Figmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transient and steady state analysis of drill cuttings transport phenomena under turbulent conditions

Epelle

Gerogiorgis

2018

Chemical Engineering Research and Design

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Understanding the intricacies of multiphase flows is paramount to any drilling operation, and this has been under continuing and intensive development for the past decades. A major complexity associated with this operation is the uncertainty in the transport phenomena of generated cuttings as drilling progresses under different attainable configurations and fluid rheological conditions. Increased transport efficiency of drill cuttings in most drilling operations is usually characterised by an increased mud circulation velocity; this creates complex turbulent interactions between the solid and liquid phases. The study of the dispersion of these cuttings, in relation to their axial, tangential and slip velocity profiles in the annulus is carefully investigated in this work under steady and transient conditions. Computational Fluid Dynamics models (Eulerian-Eulerian, Lagrangian-Eulerian/Discrete Element Method) are utilised for this purpose. The implementation of the Eulerian-Eulerian model provides a macroscopic description of the distribution of fundamental flow properties such as pressure, volume fractions and velocities of each phase. Furthermore, a direct description of the particulate flow, inherent transient motion, interparticle and particlewall collisions are obtained with the particle tracking functionality of the Lagrangian-Eulerian/DEM technique. The results obtained using the Eulerian-Eulerian model reveal that particle slip velocities are lowest at the central regions of the annulus with the effect of asymmetry due to inner pipe rotation being more pronounced along the longitudinal plane. Particle diameter has tremendous effects on the alteration of turbulence properties of the continuous phase with very distinct velocity profiles. Cuttings trajectory analysis show some extra phenomena which have been physically observed in available experimental studies; one of which is the occurrence of ejections of coherent structures at the walls of the flow domain. The difficulty of carrying out transient and steady state experimental measurements of particle velocities is an area where CFD shows great potential. The few available data in literature are well predicted with errors less than 11%. Similarly, fluid axial and tangential velocity predictions carried out, yield reasonably accurate results, thus further validating the CFD approach employed in this work. 1.

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Simulation of cuttings transport with foam in deviated wellbores using computational fluid dynamics

Cited by 33 publications

References 48 publications

A multiparametric CFD analysis of multiphase annular flows for oil and gas drilling applications

A multiparametric CFD analysis of multiphase annular flows for oil and gas drilling applications

Improving the Cuttings Transport Performance of Water-based Mud Through the Use of Polypropylene Beads

Transient and steady state analysis of drill cuttings transport phenomena under turbulent conditions

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