The Quest for Improved Proppant Placement: Investigation of the Effects of Proppant Slurry Component Properties on Transport

Brannon, Harold; Wood, W.D.; Wheeler, Richard S.

doi:10.2118/95675-ms

Cited by 16 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Thereafter, the injected proppant particles will flow over the top of the equilibrium-height proppant bank and travel farther to find a location at which the proppant bank has not reached the equilibrium height yet. This proppant transport behavior has been known for a long time [43][44][45][46][47] but has become dominant only recently, due to the widespread use of slick-water as fracturing fluids. We are not aware of incorporating it into the controller design.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Feedback control of proppant bank heights during hydraulic fracturing for enhanced productivity in shale formations

et al. 2017

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In hydraulic fracturing of shale formations, compared to conventional reservoirs, the fracturing fluid injected is of lowviscosity and hence during pumping the proppant settles significantly, forming a proppant bank. Motivated by this consideration, we initially develop a high-fidelity process model of hydraulic fracturing to describe the dominant proppant settling behavior during hydraulic fracturing process. Second, a novel remeshing strategy is developed to handle the high computational requirement due to moving boundaries. Third, a section-based optimization method is employed to obtain key fracture design parameters for enhanced productivity in shale formations subject to given fracturing resources. Fourth, a reduced-order model is constructed to design a Kalman filter and to synthesize a real-time model-based feedback control system by explicitly taking into account actuator limitations, process safety and economic considerations. We demonstrate that the proposed control scheme can regulate the uniformity of proppant bank heights along the fracture at the end of pumping.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Feedback control of proppant bank heights during hydraulic fracturing for enhanced productivity in shale formations

et al. 2017

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“…The hydrodynamic and mechanical dynamic performance of proppant in fractures is affected by multiple factors (Brannon et al, 2005). The migration and sedimentation of proppant on plate fractures were simulated under different inlet and outlet conditions, different proppant parameters, different fracturing fluid parameters (viscosity) and different fracture morphologies (single fracture and branch fracture) as well as the final equilibrium height.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The results of the simulation were compared with those of the physical model tests. The parameters in physical model tests are shown in Figure 4 (Brannon et al, 2005), where the fracture is a rectangular homogeneous one with a horn-shaped entrance and the injection is whole-surfaced.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The parameters underlying the physical and numerical simulations are presented in Table 2 (Brannon et al, 2005):…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Huang et al (2021) proposed a continuum model for simulating proppant transport and fluid flow in hydraulic fractures. Isaev et al (2023) proposed adaptive seeding/reseeding methods with exact integration of particles trajectories and local time step refinement in the vicinity of injection zones In these studies, equations describing the migration and sedimentation of proppant were derived based on the solid-liquid coupling relationship and sedimentation law during proppant flow (Hu et al, 2023;Li et al, 2023;Shi, 2016), and most of them were simulated with CFD-DEM (Gong et al, 2023;Liu et al, 2019;Lv et al, 2023;Shi, 2016;Tong and Mohanty, 2016;Xiang and Li, 2023;Zhang et al, 2022Zhang et al, , 2023aZhu et al, 2023) or CFD-XFEM software (Brannon et al, 2005;Qu et al, 2022Qu et al, , 2023Zhang et al, 2023b) such as fluent for two-dimensional and pseudo three-dimensional model. Through numerical simulations of parameters (Hang et al, 2023;Suri et al, 2019Suri et al, , 2020b based on different fracturing fluids and proppant morphologies, the velocity, concentration and pressure distribution of the proppant within the fracture were obtained, and proppant migration and sedimentation patterns were also derived for different fracture morphology parameters and proppant and fluid parameters.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Simulation and solution of a proppant migration and sedimentation model for hydraulically fractured inhomogeneously wide fractures

Peiqi,

Lin,

et al. 2024

Energy Exploration & Exploitation

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The distribution of proppant during hydraulic fracturing may directly contribute to the flow conductivity of the proppant fracture, so research on the migration and sedimentation of proppant in the fracture and the final distribution pattern is of great relevance. The mass conservation equations of proppant solids and fracturing fluid were adopted to describe the distribution of proppant migration and sedimentation in the fracture, improving the additional gravity coefficient by utilizing the density difference between proppant and fracturing fluid and the concentration of proppant, together with the proppant sedimentation velocity at different Reynolds numbers in this study. The flow coefficients were obtained by discretizing the system of equations through the finite volume method combined with the harmonic mean method and the upstream weight method. The concentration additional pressure gradient term was computed by using the Superbee format innovatively to improve the solution convergence of the model. Numerical simulations with identical parameters were compared with indoor test results, which fully verified the correctness of the model and the accuracy of the discrete solution based on the finite volume method. The effects of flow rate of fracturing fluid, ratio of injected sand, viscosity of fracturing fluid, grain size of proppant and density of proppant on proppant migration and sedimentation based on three elliptical fracture morphologies: even-wide, top-wide and bottom-narrow as well as top-narrow and bottom-wide were investigated and analyzed through comparing the rate of proppant front movement, the level of sweeping range and the degree of inhomogeneity in the range under different conditions. Findings of this study suggest that: (1) top-wide and bottom-narrow fractures are more preferable for homogenous sanding in the early stage of proppant injection, and top-narrow and bottom-wide fractures are best for sanding in the later stage; (2) the viscosity of fracturing fluid is the most influential factor on proppant migration and sedimentation, which increases in the range of 100 mPa.s to enhance the sweeping range and homogeneity of proppant sanding and therefore achieve a better fracturing effect.

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Improved Understanding of Proppant Transport Yields New Insight to the Design and Placement of Fracturing Treatments

Brannon¹,

Wood²,

Wheeler³

2006

All Days

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Post-frac production analyses frequently suggest that effective fracture area is significantly less than that designed, implying either the existence of excessive proppant-pack damage or, that the proppant was not placed in designated areal location. The conductive fracture area is defined by the propped fracture height and the effective fracture length. Optimization of effective fracture area is among the principal tenets of fracturing design engineering. It is well understood that effective fracture area is a first order driver for well productivity, and optimization of such is often critical to economic exploitation of reservoir assets. The results of extensive testing in a large-scale slot apparatus to delineate the relative effects of various component and treatment parameters on proppant transport capability were reported previously. In an extension of that effort, an empirical proppant transport model has been developed using the information gleaned from previous testing and then refined using newly generated data to expand the range of the various component parameters. The model has input parameters including fluid viscosity, proppant size, both fluid and proppant specific gravity, injection rate, and fracture geometry. The model output is the estimated propped fracture length of a given treatment design incorporating a fracturing fluid slurry having the input parameters. Utilizing the new model, the most favorable combination of fracturing slurry component properties and pumping parameters can identified and incorporated in fracturing treatment design and applications to optimize effective propped fracture length, and thereby well performance. Introduction and Background Effective propped fracture area is the key fracturing treatment design parameter engineers seek to maximize for optimum stimulated well performance. Efforts to provide improved effective fracture area have traditionally focused on the proppant transport and fracture clean-up attributes of fracturing fluid systems. Poor proppant transport in slick water results in the tendency of proppants to settle rapidly, often below the target zone, yielding relatively short effective fracture lengths and insufficient coverage of the productive zone height, and consequently, steeper post-stimulation production declines than may be desired. Inadequate fracture clean-up can result in significant reduction of the fracture conductivity and reduced stimulation efficiency. Post-frac production analyses frequently demonstrate less than anticipated fracture area, suggesting excessive proppant-pack damage or that the proppant was not placed in designated areal location. The development of ultra-lightweight proppants (ULW proppants), having the requisite mechanical properties to function as a fracturing proppant at reservoir temperature and stress conditions was recently reported by Rickards, etal.1 and Wood, et.al 2. Hydraulic fracturing treatments employing the ULW proppants have often resulted in stimulated well productivity well beyond historical expectation. The ULW proppant is believed to facilitate improved proppant placement, thus providing for significantly larger effective fracture area than can be achieved with previous fluid/proppant systems. The increased effective fracture area is thought to account for the improved stimulated well productivity which has been experienced.

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The Quest for Improved Proppant Placement: Investigation of the Effects of Proppant Slurry Component Properties on Transport

Cited by 16 publications

References 15 publications

Feedback control of proppant bank heights during hydraulic fracturing for enhanced productivity in shale formations

Feedback control of proppant bank heights during hydraulic fracturing for enhanced productivity in shale formations

Simulation and solution of a proppant migration and sedimentation model for hydraulically fractured inhomogeneously wide fractures

Improved Understanding of Proppant Transport Yields New Insight to the Design and Placement of Fracturing Treatments

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