Partial phase flow rate measurements for stratified oil-water flow in horizontal wells

To accurately measure and evaluate the oil-water production profile of horizontal wells, a dynamic measurement experiment of oil-water two-phase flow in horizontal wells and numerical simulation were combined to establish a method for measuring the partial phase flow rate of oil-water two-phase stratified flow in horizontal wells. An experimental work was performed in horizontal oil-water two-phase flow simulation well using combination production logging tool including mini-capacitance sensor and mini-spinner. The combination tool provides a recording of holdup and velocity profiles at five different heights of the borehole cross-section. The effect of total flow rate and water-cut on the response of spinner and capacitive sensor at five measured positions were investigated. The capacitance water holdup interpolation imaging algorithm was used to determine the local fluid property and oil-water interface height, and the measured local fluid speed was combined with the numerical simulation result to establish an optimal calculation model for obtaining the partial phase flow rate of the oil-water two-phase stratified flow in the horizontal well. The calculated flow rates of five measured points are basically consistent with the experimental data, the total flow rate and water holdup from calculation are in agreement with the set values in the experiment too, suggesting that the method has high accuracy.

Simulation of Oil-Water Flow in Shale Oil Reservoirs Based on Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics

A Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics(SPH)method is employed to simulate the two-phase flow of oil and water in a reservoir.It is shown that,in comparison to the classical finite difference approach,this method is more stable and effective at capturing the complex evolution of this category of two-phase flows.The influence of several smooth functions is explored and it is concluded that the Gaussian function is the best one.After 200 days,the block water cutoff for the Gaussian function is 0.3,whereas the other functions have a block water cutoff of 0.8.The effect of various injection ratios on real reservoir production is explored.When 14 and 8 m^(3)/day is employed,the water breakthrough time is 130 and 170 days,respectively,and the block produces 9246 m^(3) and 6338 m^(3) of oil cumulatively over 400 days.

Simulation of Oil-Water Flow in a Shale Reservoir Using a Radial Basis Function

Due to the difficulties associated with preprocessing activities and poor grid convergence when simulating shale reservoirs in the context of traditional grid methods,in this study an innovative two-phase oil-water seepage model is elaborated.The modes is based on the radial basis meshless approach and is used to determine the pressure and water saturation in a sample reservoir.Two-dimensional examples demonstrate that,when compared to the finite difference method,the radial basis function method produces less errors and is more accurate in predicting daily oil production.The radial basis function and finite difference methods provide errors of 5.78 percent and 7.5 percent,respectively,when estimating the daily oil production data for a sample well.A sensitivity analysis of the key parameters that affect the radial basis function’s computation outcomes is also presented.

Numerical Analysis of Heavy Oil-Water Flow and Leak Detection in Vertical Pipeline

Pipeline is a conventional, efficient and economic way for oil transportations. The use of a good system for detecting and locating leaks in pipeline contribute significantly to operational safety and cost saving in petroleum industry. This paper aims to study the heavy oil-water flow in vertical ducts including leakage. A transient numerical analysis, using the ANSYS-CFX? 11.0 commercial software is performed. The mathematical modeling considers the effect of drag and gravitational forces between the phases and turbulent flow. Mass flow rate of the phases in the leaking orifice, the pressure drop as a function of the time and the velocity distributions are presented and discussed. We can conclude that volumetric fraction of phases and fluid mixture velocity affect pressure drop and mass flow rate at the leak hole.

Experimental and Numerical Analysis of Oil-Water Flow with Drag Reducing Polymers in Horizontal Pipes

The well-known frictional effect related to liquid-liquid two-phaseflow in pipelines can be reduced using drag-reducing additives.In this study,such an effect has been investigated experimentally using a mixture of oil and water.Moreover,numerical simulations have been carried out using the COMSOL simulation software.The mea-surements were taken in a horizontal pipe with the length and diameter equal to 3 and 0.125 m,respectively.Moreover,Polyethylene oxide with 150 ppm was exploited to reduce the drag effect while considering different water-to-oil fractions(0.3,0.4,0.5,and 0.7)and a constant totalflow velocity of 2.3 m/s.As made evident by the results,a significant reduction can be obtained in terms of pressure drop,which becomes even more significant as the water to oil fraction is increased.The maximum achieved drag reduction is 70%with a water fraction of 0.7.The results also show that the addition of polymer additives can also have an impact on theflow pattern.Com-parison of experimental and numerically determined pressure drop indicates that the error is smaller than 7%.

Numerical Approach of a Coupled Pressure-Saturation Model Describing Oil-Water Flow in Porous Media

Two-phase flow in porous media is a very active field of research,due to its important applications in groundwater pollution,CO_(2)sequestration,or oil and gas production from petroleum reservoirs,just to name a few of them.Fractional flow equations,which make use of Darcy's law,for describing the movement of two immiscible fluids in a porous medium,are among the most relevant mathematical models in reservoir simulation.This work aims to solve a fractional flow model formed by an elliptic equation,representing the spatial distribution of the pressure,and a hyperbolic equation describing the space-time evolution of water saturation.The numerical solution of the elliptic part is obtained using a finite-element(FE)scheme,while the hyperbolic equation is solved by means of two dif-ferent numerical approaches,both in the finite-volume(FV)framework.One is based on a monotonic upstream-centered scheme for conservation laws(MUSCL)-Hancock scheme,whereas the other makes use of a weighted essentially non-oscillatory(ENO)reconstruc-tion.In both cases,a first-order centered(FORCE)-αnumerical scheme is applied for inter-cell flux reconstruction,which constitutes a new contribution in the field of fractional flow models describing oil-water movement.A relevant feature of this work is the study of the effect of the parameterαon the numerical solution of the models considered.We also show that,in the FORCE-αmethod,when the parameterαincreases,the errors diminish and the order of accuracy is more properly attained,as verified using a manufactured solution technique.

Numerical Simulation of Oil-Water Two-Phase Flow in Low Permeability Tight Reservoirs Based on Weighted Least Squares Meshless Method

In response to the complex characteristics of actual low-permeability tight reservoirs,this study develops a meshless-based numerical simulation method for oil-water two-phase flow in these reservoirs,considering complex boundary shapes.Utilizing radial basis function point interpolation,the method approximates shape functions for unknown functions within the nodal influence domain.The shape functions constructed by the aforementioned meshless interpolation method haveδ-function properties,which facilitate the handling of essential aspects like the controlled bottom-hole flow pressure in horizontal wells.Moreover,the meshless method offers greater flexibility and freedom compared to grid cell discretization,making it simpler to discretize complex geometries.A variational principle for the flow control equation group is introduced using a weighted least squares meshless method,and the pressure distribution is solved implicitly.Example results demonstrate that the computational outcomes of the meshless point cloud model,which has a relatively small degree of freedom,are in close agreement with those of the Discrete Fracture Model(DFM)employing refined grid partitioning,with pressure calculation accuracy exceeding 98.2%.Compared to high-resolution grid-based computational methods,the meshless method can achieve a better balance between computational efficiency and accuracy.Additionally,the impact of fracture half-length on the productivity of horizontal wells is discussed.The results indicate that increasing the fracture half-length is an effective strategy for enhancing production from the perspective of cumulative oil production.

Impact of interfacial tension on oil-water flow in a narrow gap

Numerous researchers have examined the co-current flow of oil-water and aqueous solutions containing polymers and surfactants in thin gaps for oil recovery.While some have focused on charges and forces at the interfaces of oil-surfactant solutions during flow.The study of flow structures,interface behavior,and relative permeabilities of oil and aqueous phases of surfactant flow through thin gaps has been less explored.For the first time,this research aims to comprehensively investigate the flow of oil-water and oil-surfactant solutions through a thin gap(Hele-Shaw cell)with a particular focus on the impact of sodium dodecyl sulfate(SDS).The experiments reveal that SDS forms an emulsion near the oil-water interface,capturing oil droplets and enabling their flow along with the SDS solution.Microscopic studies confirm this,showing that when SDS contacts oil,it creates channels through the oil phase,leading to the accumulation and division of oil into small round-shaped droplets,resulting in an oil-in-water emulsion.The addition of SDS to the injecting water significantly enhances relative permeabilities,leading to a remarkable 90%increase in oil recovery from the cell.The research suggests that the optimal SDS concentration range for maximum oil recovery is between 1.5 and 2 wt%,as it achieves the minimum interfacial tension between oil and water.

Pressure transient characteristics of non-uniform conductivity fractured wells in viscoelasticity polymer flooding based on oil-water two-phase flow

Polymer flooding in fractured wells has been extensively applied in oilfields to enhance oil recovery.In contrast to water,polymer solution exhibits non-Newtonian and nonlinear behavior such as effects of shear thinning and shear thickening,polymer convection,diffusion,adsorption retention,inaccessible pore volume and reduced effective permeability.Meanwhile,the flux density and fracture conductivity along the hydraulic fracture are generally non-uniform due to the effects of pressure distribution,formation damage,and proppant breakage.In this paper,we present an oil-water two-phase flow model that captures these complex non-Newtonian and nonlinear behavior,and non-uniform fracture characteristics in fractured polymer flooding.The hydraulic fracture is firstly divided into two parts:high-conductivity fracture near the wellbore and low-conductivity fracture in the far-wellbore section.A hybrid grid system,including perpendicular bisection(PEBI)and Cartesian grid,is applied to discrete the partial differential flow equations,and the local grid refinement method is applied in the near-wellbore region to accurately calculate the pressure distribution and shear rate of polymer solution.The combination of polymer behavior characterizations and numerical flow simulations are applied,resulting in the calculation for the distribution of water saturation,polymer concentration and reservoir pressure.Compared with the polymer flooding well with uniform fracture conductivity,this non-uniform fracture conductivity model exhibits the larger pressure difference,and the shorter bilinear flow period due to the decrease of fracture flow ability in the far-wellbore section.The field case of the fall-off test demonstrates that the proposed method characterizes fracture characteristics more accurately,and yields fracture half-lengths that better match engineering reality,enabling a quantitative segmented characterization of the near-wellbore section with high fracture conductivity and the far-wellbore section with low fracture conductivity.The novelty of this paper is the analysis of pressure performances caused by the fracture dynamics and polymer rheology,as well as an analysis method that derives formation and fracture parameters based on the pressure and its derivative curves.

Ultrasonic method for measuring water holdup of low velocity and high-water-cut oil-water two-phase flow

Oil reservoirs with low permeability and porosity that are in the middle and late exploitation periods in China＇s onshore oil fields are mostly in the high-water-cut production stage.This stage is associated with severely non-uniform local-velocity flow profiles and dispersed-phase concentration（of oil droplets） in oil-water two-phase flow,which makes it difficult to measure water holdup in oil wells.In this study,we use an ultrasonic method based on a transmission-type sensor in oil-water two-phase flow to measure water holdup in lowvelocity and high water-cut conditions.First,we optimize the excitation frequency of the ultrasonic sensor by calculating the sensitivity of the ultrasonic field using the finite element method for multiphysics coupling.Then we calculate the change trend of sound pressure level attenuation ratio with the increase in oil holdup to verify the feasibility of the employed diameter for the ultrasonic sensor.Based on the results,we then investigate the effects of oildroplet diameter and distribution on the ultrasonic field.To further understand the measurement characteristics of the ultrasonic sensor,we perform a flow loop test on vertical upward oilwater two-phase flow and measure the responses of the optimized ultrasonic sensor.The results show that the ultrasonic sensor yields poor resolution for a dispersed oil slug in water flow（D OS/W flow）,but the resolution is favorable for dispersed oil in water flow（D O/W flow） and very fine dispersed oil in water flow（VFD O/W flow）.This research demonstrates the potential application of a pulsed-transmission ultrasonic method for measuring the fraction of individual components in oil-water two-phase flow with a low mixture velocity and high water cut.

Wax deposition modeling in oil-water stratified pipe flow

Wax deposition in oil-water stratified flow is commonly encountered onshore and offshore oil production pipe systems,and typically reduces transportation capacity of oil.The accurate predicted model of wax deposition has becomes an indispensable approach to design effective remediation strategies.However,a reliable mechanistic model for wax deposition prediction in oil-water two-phase stratified pipe flow is lacking to validate the deposition process.In this work,a three-dimensional(axial,radial,and angular)robust wax deposit model for oil-water stratified circular pipe flow was developed.The model of formation of a gel deposit based on the first principles of rheology was developed,associated with the results obtained from hydrodynamics and heat/mass transfer simulations.The predictions for wax deposition are found to compare satisfactorily with experimental data with two different oils for single phase and four different water cuts for oil-water stratified pipe flow.It can be seen from the wax gelation mechanism that an increase in water cut can help to reduce the wall/oil-deposit interface shear stress,thereby leading to an increase in the degree of gelation as well as the deposit rate.Furthermore,a local deposit analysis in the circumferential direction was conducted,for water cut 75%and total flow rate 5 m3/h,which provided insights to understand that the thickness on pipe wall was roughly uniformly distributed locates near the top of the pipe and the nearer the position gets close to two points,where the oil-water interface contacts the inner wall,the deposition thickness quickly dropped to 0.It was attributed to the fact that a roughly uniformly thickness far away from the oil-water interface contact the inner wall resulted in the slowly changes temperature along the circumferential pipe wall wetted by oil.

Measurement of oil-water flow via the correlation of turbine flow meter, gamma ray densitometry and drift-flux model

The flow rate of the oil-water horizontal flow is measured by the combination of the turbine flow meter and the singlebeam gamma ray densitometry. The emphasis is placed on the effects of the pipe diameter, the oil viscosity and the slip velocity on the measurement accuracy. It is shown that the mixture flow rate measured by the turbine flow meter can meet the application requirement in the water continuous pattern（ o- w flow pattern）. In addition, by introducing the developed drift-flux model into the measurement system, the relative errors of measurements for component phase flow rates can be controlled within ±5%. Although more accurate methods for the flow rate measurement are available, the method suggested in this work is advantageous over other methods due to its simplicity for practical applications in the petroleum industry.

Numerical Simulation of Fluid Flow and Oil-Water Separation in Hydrocyclones

The fluid flow and oil-water separation were simulated using a Reynolds stress transport equation model of turbulence in water flow and a stochastic model of oil droplet motion. Simulation results give the axial and tangential velocity components, the pressure and turbulence intensity distribution and droplet trajectories for a hydrocyclone of F type and a hydrocyclone proposed by the present authors. The flow field predictions are in qualitative agreement with the LDV measurements. The results show that the proposed hydrocyclone has better performance than the hydrocyclone of F type due to creating stronger centrifugal force and lower axial velocity.

Fluid property identification of the Lower Cretaceous reservoirs with complex oil-water contacts in Deseo Basin,Chad

Recently,exploration breakthroughs have been made in the Lower Cretaceous sandstone reservoirs in the Doseo Basin,but the identification of reservoir fluid property is difficult due to variable reservoir lithology,complex oil-water contact within and faint responses of the oil zone,which causes the lower accuracy of reservoir fluid property identification with conventional mudlogging and wirelogging techniques.Applying the geochemical logging,fluorescent logging,mud logging and cutting logging technology,in combination with formation test data,this paper distinguishes the crude oil types,analyzes the logging response characteristics of oil zone after water washing,and establishes the interpretation charts and parameter standards for reservoir fluid properties.The crude oil can be divided into two types,namely viscous-heavy and thin-light,based on total hydrocarbon content and component concentration tested by mud logging,features of pyrolysis gas chromatogram and fluorescence spectroscopy.The general characteristics of oil layers experienced water washing include the decrease of total hydrocarbon content and component concentration from mud logging,the decrease of S1 and PS values from geochemical logging,the decrease of hydrocarbon abundance and absence of some light components in pyrolysis gas chromatogram,and the decrease of fluorescence area and intensity from fluorescence logging.According to crude oil types,the cross plots of S1 versus peak-baseline ratio,and the cross plots of rock wettability versus fluorescence area ratio are drawn and used to interpret reservoir fluid property.Meanwhile,the standards of reservoir fluid parameter are established combining with the parameters of PS and the parameters in above charts,and comprehensive multiparameter correlation in both vertical and horizontal ways is also performed to interpret reservoir fluid property.The application in the Doseo Basin achieved great success,improving interpretation ability of fluid property in the reservoir with complex oil-water contact,and also provided technical reference for the efficient exploration and development of similar reservoirs.

Complex network analysis in inclined oil-water two-phase flow

Complex networks have established themselves in recent years as being particularly suitable and flexible for representing and modelling many complex natural and artificial systems. Oil-water two-phase flow is one of the most complex systems. In this paper, we use complex networks to study the inclined oil water two-phase flow. Two different complex network construction methods are proposed to build two types of networks, i.e. the flow pattern complex network （FPCN） and fluid dynamic complex network （FDCN）. Through detecting the community structure of FPCN by the community-detection algorithm based on K-means clustering, useful and interesting results are found which can be used for identifying three inclined oil-water flow patterns. To investigate the dynamic characteristics of the inclined oil-water two-phase flow, we construct 48 FDCNs under different flow conditions, and find that the power-law exponent and the network information entropy, which are sensitive to the flow pattern transition, can both characterize the nonlinear dynamics of the inclined oil-water two-phase flow. In this paper, from a new perspective, we not only introduce a complex network theory into the study of the oil-water two-phase flow but also indicate that the complex network may be a powerful tool for exploring nonlinear time series in practice.

Liquid holdup measurement with double helix capacitance sensor in horizontal oil-water two-phase flow pipes

This paper presents the characteristics of a double helix capacitance sensor for measurement of the liquid holdup in horizontal oil–water two-phase flow. The finite element method is used to calculate the sensitivity field of the sensor in a pipe with 20 mm inner diameter and the effect of sensor geometry on the distribution of sensitivity field is presented. Then, a horizontal oil–water two-phase flow experiment is carried out to measure the response of the double helix capacitance sensor, in which a novel method is proposed to calibrate the liquid holdup based on three pairs of parallel-wire capacitance probes. The performance of the sensor is analyzed in terms of the flow structures detected by mini-conductance array probes.

Characterization of Flame Retardancy and Oil-Water Separation Capacity of Superhydrophobic Silylated Melamine Sponges

A silylated melamine sponge(SMS)was prepared by two simple steps,namely,immersion and dehydration of a melamine sponge coated with methyltrichlorosilane.The silylated structure of SMS was characterized by FT-IR(Fourier-transform infrared)spectroscopy,SEM(Scanning electron microscopy)and in terms of water contact angles.Its oil-water absorption and separation capacities were measured by FT-IR and UV-visible spectrophoto-metry.The experimental results have shown that oligomeric silanol covalently bonds by Si-N onto the surface of melamine sponge skeletons.SMS has shown superhydrophobicity with a water contact angle exceeding 150°±1°,a better separation efficiency with regard to diesel oil(by 99.31%(wt/wt%)in oil-water mixture and even up to 99.99%(wt/wt%)for diesel oil in its saturated aqueous solution.Moreover,SMS inherited the intrinsicflame retardancy of the melamine sponge.In general,SMS has shown superhydrophobicity,high porosity,excellent selectivity,remarkable recyclability,and better absorption capacity for various oils and organic solvents,and a high separation efficiency for oil in saturated aqueous solutions.

Relative permeability estimation of oil-water two-phase flow in shale reservoir

Oil-water two-phase flow is ubiquitous in shale strata due to the existence of connate water and the injection of fracturing fluid.In this work,we propose a relative permeability model based on a modified Hagen-Poiseuille(HP)equation and shale reconstruction algorithm.The proposed model can consider the nanoconfined effects(slip length and spatially varying viscosity),oil-water distribution,pore size distribution(PSD),total organic matter content(TOC),and micro-fracture.The results show that the increasing contact angles of organic matters(OM)and inorganic minerals(iOM)increase the relative permeability of both oil and water.As the viscosity ratio increases,the relative permeability of oil phase increases while that of water phase decreases,due to the different water-oil distribution.The effective permeability of both oil and water decreases with the increasing TOC.However,the relative permeability of water phase increases while that of oil phase decreases.The increasing number and decreasing deviation angle of micro-fracture increase the effective permeability of oil and water.However,microfracture has a minor effect on relative permeability.Our model can help understand oil-water twophase flow in shale reservoirs and provide parameter characterization for reservoir numerical simulation.

Multifractal analysis of inclined oil-water countercurrent flow

Characterizing countercurrent flow structures in an inclined oil-water two-phase flow from one-dimensional measurement is of great importance for model building and sensor design.Firstly,we conducted oil-water two-phase flow experiments in an inclined pipe to measure the conductance signals of three typical water-dominated oil-water flow patterns in inclined flow,i.e.,dispersion oil-in-water pseudo-slug flow （PS）,dispersion oil-in-water countercurrent flow （CT）,and transitional flow （TF）.In pseudo-slug flow,countercurrent flow and transitional flow,oil is completely dispersed in water.Then we used magnitude and sign decomposition analysis and multifractal analysis to reveal levels of complexity in different flow patterns.We found that the PS and CT flow patterns both exhibited high complexity and obvious multifractal dynamic behavior,but the magnitude scaling exponent and singularity of the CT flow pattern were less than those of the PS flow pattern; and the TF flow pattern exhibited low complexity and almost monofractal behavior,and its magnitude scaling was close to random behavior.Meanwhile,at short time scales,all sign series of two-phase flow patterns exhibited very similar strong positive correlation; at high time scales,the scaling analysis of sign series showed different anti-correlated behavior.Furthermore,with an increase in oil flow rate,the flow structure became regular,which could be reflected by the decrease in the width of spectrum and the difference in dimensions.The results suggested that different oil-water flow patterns exhibited different nonlinear features,and the varying levels of complexity could well characterize the fluid dynamics underlying different oil-water flow patterns.

Volumetric fraction measurement in oil-water-gas multiphase flow with dual energy gamma-ray system

Volumetric fraction distribution measurement is a constituent part of process tomography system in oil-water-gas multiphase flow. With the technological development of nuclear radial inspection, dual-energy γ-ray techniques make it possible to investigate the concentration of the different components on the cross-section of oil-water-gas multiphase pipe-flow. The dual-energy gamma-ray technique is based on materials attenuation coefficients measurement comprised of two radioactive isotopes of 241Am and 241Cs which have emission energies at 59.5 keV and 662 keV in this project. Nuclear instruments and data acquisition system were designed to measure the material’s attenuation dose rate and a number of static tests were conducted at the Multiphase Laboratory, Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Three phases of oil-water-gas media were inves- tigated for their possible use to simulate different media volumetric fraction distributions in experimental vessels. Attenuation intensities were measured, and the arithmetic of linear attenuation coefficients and the equations of volumetric fractions were studied. Investigation of an unexpected measurement error from attenuation equations revealed that a modified arithmetic was involved and finally the system achieved acceptable accuracy in experimental research.