Abstract
The uncontrolled eruption of a well is one of the most critical accidents that can occur both during exploration and exploitation of hydrocarbon fields. Significant HSE issues are associated to this event that introduces safety risks for the field operators, potential health injury for the population living in the area and impacts, mainly associated to the hydrocarbon contamination, on the environment.
This paper describes a methodology, developed by ENI E&P in the framework of a specific R&D project, permitting the complete analysis of the phenomenology associated to the blow-out event. The procedure, implemented in a PC user friendly software supplies all the information necessary for the complete characterization of the accident from a HSE point of view. In particular, the following data can be derived from the methods:
release characterization;
not ignited jet characterization;
not ignited toxic and flammable gas and oil dispersion characterization;
ignited jet characterization;
dynamic killing design.
The above set of data is calculated making use of a constellation of models simulating the various physical phenomena characterizing the blow-out event. Part of these models have been developed in the framework of the R&D project being relevant to phenomena (e.g. oil atomization, two-phase jet, two-phase combustion) not sufficiently treated in the literature. In some cases literature/commercial models have been selected after a State of the Art study. All the models included in the procedure have been validated both with experimental and/or numerical (CFD) data.
The methodology is presently successfully applied in most of the ENI E&P developments.
In the paper the description of the methodology structure and models is reported with validation results and some application scenarios.
