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.

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.

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.

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.

Preparation of Silica Nanosphere with Vertical Pore and Its Application in Oil-water Separation

Uniform monodispersed mesoporous silica nanospheres with vertical pores were successfully synthesized using chiral amphiphilic small molecule L-16Ala5PyClO4and solvents as dual templates via solgel transcription.The morphologies and pore sizes of silicas are adjustable by changing the type and amount of solvents in the reaction systems.With the increase of the organic solvent content,the morphologies of the obtained silica changed from nanospheres with vertical pore structures to nanosheets structures.When 1 mL of benzene,cyclohexane or toluene were used as solvents,only silica nanospheres were obtained,the BET surface areas of silica nanospheres reached 600.7,669.5,and 560.8 m^(2)/g,respectively.The pore sizes were 3.51,3.54,and 3.46 nm,respectively.Significantly,these ordered silica nanospheres/poly(vinyl alcohol-co-ethylene)(PVAco-PE)nanofiber membranes have high separation efficiencies(>99%)for n-hexane/water mixtures.

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.

Preparation of Hydrophobic Fly Ash by Surface Modification and Oil-water Separation Devices

A simple and effective superhydrophobic mesh was designed and made to separate oil-water mixture. Alkali-activated fly ash reacted with 1-bromooctadecane to prepare superhydrophobic modified fly ash (MFA) with low surface energy through Williamson ether synthesis. The MFA powder was then coated uniformly on a stainless steel mesh (SSM) along with the epoxy resin E44 and curing agent T31 to give the superhydrophobic MFA-modified stainless steel mesh (MFA-SSM). The MFA-SSM has a high static water contact angle (CA) of 150.1°and can separate various oil or organic solvent from water with>95%separation efficiency. The oil-water separation efficiency remained high after 30 runs of petroleum ether/water separation.The developed superhydrophobic stainless steel mesh is expected to have wider use in oil-water separation.

CFD numerical simulation of flow velocity characteristics of hydrocyclone

A CFD based numerical simulation of flow velocity of hydrocyclone was conducted with different structural and operational parameters to investigate its distribution characteristics and influencing mechanism. The results show there exist several unsymmetrical envelopes of equal vertical velocities in both upward inner flows and downward outer flows in the hydrocyclone, and the cone angle and apex diameter have remarkable influence on the vertical location of the cone bottom of the envelope of zero vertical velocity. It is also found that the tangential velocity isolines exist in the horizontal planes located in the effective separation region of hydrocyclone. The increase of feed pressure has almost no effect on the distribution characteristics of both vertical velocity and tangential velocity in hydrocyclone, but the magnitude and gradient of tangential velocity are increased obviously to make the motion velocity of high density particles to the wall increased and to make the cyclonic separation effect improved.

Numerical and experimental studies of flow field in hydrocyclone with air core

For the flow field in a d50 mm hydrocyclone, numerical studies based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation and experimental studies based on particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurement were carried out respectively. The results of two methods show that air core generally forms after 0.7 s, the similar characteristics of air core can be observed. Vortexes and axial velocity distributions obtained by numerical and experimental methods are also in good agreement. Studies of different parameters based on CFD simulation show that tangential velocity distribution inside the hydrocyclone can be regarded as a combined vortex. Axial and tangential velocities increase as the feed rate increases. The enlargement of cone angle and overflow outlet diameter can speed up the overflow discharge rate. The change of underflow outlet diameter has no significant effect on axial and tangential velocities.

Size dependent flow behaviors of particles in hydrocyclone based on multiphase simulation

To investigate the flow behaviors of different size particles in hydrocyclone,a designed process was numerically simulated by the transient solver,where the quartz particles possessing a size distribution were injected into a 100 mm diameter hydrocyclone with the steady water field and air core inside.A lab experimental work has validated the chosen models in simulation by comparing the classification efficiency results.The simulated process shows that the 25 μm quartz particles,close to the cut size,need much more time than the finer and coarser particles to reach the steady flow rate on the outlets of hydrocyclone.For the particles in the inner swirl,with the quartz size increasing from 5 to 25 μm,the particles take more time to enter the vortex finder.The 25 μm quartz particles move outward in the radial direction when they go up to the vortex finder,which is contrary to the quartz particles of 5 μm and 15 μm as they are closely surrounding the air core.The studies reveal that the flow behaviors of particles inside the hydrocyclone depend on the particle size.

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.

Oil–water pre-separation with a novel axial hydrocyclone

A novel hydrocyclone with guide vanes, named as axial hydrocyclone(AHC), is designed to tackle the problem of oil–water separation faced by most mature oilfields. Optimal design of the AHC is carried out by using numerical methods. The effects of guide vanes, cone angle, tapered angle and overflow pipe on the oil–water separation are discussed in this paper. The results show that a double swirling flow is generated in the tapered section where oil–water separation occurs. Both the cylindrical and the tapered section have important influences on AHC performance. On the basis of single factor results, response surface methodology is employed to optimize the AHC design. The experimental results indicate that the novel AHC has an excellent performance for the oil–water separation.

Numerical analysis of hydroabrasion in a hydrocyclone

The velocity profiles and separation efficiency curves of a hydrocyclone were predicted by an Euler-Euler approach using a computational fluid dynamics tool ANSYS-CFX 14.5. The Euler-Euler approach is capable of considering the particle-particle interactions and is appropriate for highly laden liquid-solid mixtures. Pre- dicted results were compared and validated with experi- mental results and showed a considerably good agreement. An increase in the particle cut size with increasing solid concentration of the inlet mixture flow was observed and discussed. In addition to this, the erosion on hydrocyclone walls constructed from stainless steel 410, eroded by sand particles （mainly SiOz）, was predicted with the Euler-La- grange approach. In this approach, the abrasive solid particles were traced in a Lagrangian reference frame as discrete particles. The increases in the input flow velocity, solid concentration, and the particle size have increased the erosion at the upper part of the cylindrical body of the hydrocyclone, where the tangential inlet flow enters the hydrocyclone. The erosion density in the area between the cylindrical to conical body area, in comparison to other parts of the hydrocyclone, also increased considerably. Moreover, it was observed that an increase in the particle shape factor from 0.1 to 1.0 leads to a decrease of almost 70 % in the average erosion density of the hydrocyclone wall surfaces.

Numerical investigation of the velocity field and separation efficiency of deoiling hydrocyclones

Three-dimensional simulation of a multiphase flow is performed using the EulerianEulerian finite volume method in order to evaluate the separation efficiency and velocity field of deoiling hydrocyclones.The solution is developed using a mass conservation-based algorithm（MCBA） with collocated grid arrangement.The mixture approach of the Reynolds stress model is also employed in order to capture features of turbulent multiphase swirling flow.The velocity field and separation efficiency of two different configurations of deoiling hydrocyclones are compared with available experimental data.The comparison shows that the separation efficiency can be predicted with high accuracy using computational fluid dynamics.The velocity fields are also in good agreement with available experimental velocity measurements.Special attention is drawn to swirl intensity in deoiling hydrocyclones and it is shown that the differences in velocity and volume fraction fields of different configurations are related to swirl distribution.

Evaluation of Fractionation of Softwood Pulp in a Cylindrical Hydrocyclone

Pulp fiber length characterization is addressed in this article. It is suggested that the proposed separation index H(L) is a viable index to the fiber fractionation performance for evaluating hydrocyclones. Fractionation of softwood (coniferous wood) bleached chemithermomechanical pulp (BCTMP) fiber was carried out with a cylin- drical hydrocyclone. Pulp fiber length characteristics in different streams were examined using the fiber quality analyzer (FQA), and the cumulative fiber length fraction, the fiber length fraction density function and the separa- tion index H(L) for different streams were obtained. It is found that H(L) is very useful for characterizing the fiber fractionation performance by indicating the separation capacity of hydrocyclone for individual subgroup of fibers in different streams under different operation conditions. Results of H(L) show that there exists a critical fiber length. A higher proportion of fibers longer than the critical fiber length is in the overflow stream, and a higher proportion of fibers shorter than the critical fiber length in the underflow stream. The data obtained from FQA suggest that the split ratio is the most significant parameter for fiber fractionation performance, which is the best when the split ratio is in the range between 0.14 and 0.2. The effect of feed rate on fiber fractionation performance is weak.

Theoretical Predictions of Migration Probabilities of Liquid- Liquid Hydrocyclones Separating Light Dispersions

Based on Bloor & Ingham's approach for determining the fluid fieldand on the analyses of loci of fluid particles inside hydrocyclones,analytical models are developed for calculating the migrationprobability of single-cone and two-cone hydrocyclones separatinglight dispersions. The calculated results are in good agreement withThew's correlation at different flow rate, split ratio or fluidproperties if the structural parameters keep the same as those ofThew's 35 mm hydrocyclone. The difference between predictionsaccording to two-cone model and single-cone model is nearlynegligible, which is very close to thew's original idea that majorseparation happens in the small cone-angle zone.

Study of Structural Parameters of the Inlet of Downhole Hydrocyclones

Three different inlets of hydrocyclone are studied in combination with the construction of a dowrahole system and hydrocyclone. By comparing the relationship between the inlet structure ＆ dimensional parameter of hydrocyclone and separation efficiency ＆ pressure loss, the highest efficiency is obtained from the inlet of an involute curve with increasing depth-width ratio from the three types, in which the separation efficiency and pressure loss all drops slowly, for the length of the channel decreases, while it drops rapidly in the other two. The flow guiding ability of the inlet affects the separation efficiency greatly, so the corresponding involute type of inlet of hydrocyclone fits for downhole oil-water separation is optimized, which serves as a basis for the structural design of downhole hydrocyclone.

Effect of inlet configuration on hydrocyclone performance

Inlet configuration is important parameter of hydrocyclones,which has great impact on the classification performance.The effects of inlet configuration on the precise classification were studied by computational fluid dynamics under variouscombinations of inlet diameter and inlet velocity.The results showed that a high sharpness of classification was achieved withspecific inlet diameter and inlet velocity.The separation efficiency of the coarse particles by underflow significantly decreased wheninlet had an oversize diameter owing to a stronger short-circuit flow.It is resulted from the chaotic flow and the stronger pressuregradient around the vortex finder.Meanwhile,a low separation efficiency of the fine particles by overflow was achieved when inletvelocity was high,which indicated a low sharpness caused by the overlarge centrifugal force.

A Comparative Study of the Flow Field of High Viscosity Media in Conventional/Rotary Hydrocyclones

The flow fields inside conventional and rotary hydrocyclones were simulated respectively. In these simulations, water only and oil-water mixture, with distinctly different viscosities, were used as continuous phases. Simulation results agreed well with the experimental measurements. Simulation results showed that the conventional hydrocyclone could effectively separate sand from water, but could not separate sand from high viscosity water/oil emulsion. This showed that the viscosity of continuous phases influenced greatly both the separation efficiency and the flow field distribution in the conventional hydrocyclone. For high viscosity oil/water sand dispersion （mixture）, the rotary hydrocyclone has better separation performance than the conventional one, with a more favorable flow field distribution.

Evaluation of Fractionation of Softwood Pulp in a Cylindrical Hydrocyclone

Pulp fiber length characterization is addressed in this article. It is .suggested that the proposed separation index H（L） is a viable index to the fiber fractionation performance for evaluating hydrocyclones. Fractionation of softwood （coniferous wood） bleached chemithermomechanical pulp （BCTMP） fiber was carried out with a cylindrical hydrocyclone. Pulp fiber length characteristics in different streams were examined using the fiber quality analyzer （FQA）, and the cumulative fiber length fraction, the fiber length fraction density function and the separation index H（L） for different streams were obtained. It is found that H（L） is very useful for characterizing the fiber fractionation performance by indicating the separation capacity of hydrocyclone for individual subgroup of fibers in different streams under different operation conditions. Results of H（L） show that there exists a critical fiber length. A higher proportion of fibers longer than the critical fiber length is in the overflow stream, and a higher proportion of fibers shorter than the critical fiber length in the undertow stream. The data obtained from FQA suggest that the split ratio is the most significant parameter for fiber fractionation performance, which is the best when the split ratio is in the range between 0.14 and 0.2. The effect of feed rate on fiber fractionation performance is weak.