1. Modeling Transient Heat Transport in Wells
Sea level
Shut-off or restarting oil/gas wells generally triggers transients in flow rate, pressure, and temperature of the flowing fluid. Estimates of transient fluid temperature in such situations is very important in designing new wells and analyzing data from existing ones. Oils containing wax or asphaltene require knowledge of transient fluid temperatures for operators to avoid flowline blockage from solids deposition.
Making robust assumptions, we developed an analytic expression for transient fluid temperature by decoupling heat transport from the other two transport processes. The original model has been improved by including numerical differentiation using backward Euler and Newton-Raphson iteration scheme that remove some of the assumptions involved in the initial model. The model’s estimation compared favorably with data from various fields; the results have been published in a refereed journal in 2007.
This work has given us the impetus to work further on coupled transient transport processes. We will soon initiate work on modeling transient fluid and heat flow during initiation of production and shut-in.