Numerical Investigation of Sand-Screen Performance in the Presence of Adhesive Effects for Enhanced Sand Control
- Authors
- Siti Nur Amira Shaffee (Imperial College London and PETRONAS) | Paul F. Luckham (Imperial College London) | Omar K. Matar (Imperial College London) | Aditya Karnik (Imperial College London and Robert Gordon University) | Mohd Shahrul Amir Zamberi (PETRONAS)
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.2118/195686-PA
- Document ID
- SPE-195686-PA
- Publisher
- Society of Petroleum Engineers
- Source
- SPE Journal
- Volume
- 24
- Issue
- 05
- Publication Date
- October 2019
- Document Type
- Journal Paper
- Pages
- 2,195 - 2,208
- Language
- English
- ISSN
- 1086-055X
- Copyright
- 2019.Society of Petroleum Engineers
- Disciplines
- Keywords
- adhesion, discrete element method, computational fluid dynamics, particle-laden flows, sand control
- Downloads
- 4 in the last 30 days
- 133 since 2007
- Show more detail
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| SPE Non-Member Price: | USD 35.00 |
Summary
In many industrial processes, an effective particle-filtration system is essential for removing unwanted solids. The oil and gas industry has explored various technologies to control and manage excessive sand production, such as by installing sand screens or injecting consolidation chemicals in sand-prone wells as part of sand-management practices. However, for an unconsolidated sandstone formation, the selection and design of effective sand control remains a challenge. In recent years, the use of a computational technique known as the discrete-element method (DEM) has been explored to gain insight into the various parameters affecting sand-screen-retention behavior and the optimization of various types of sand screens (Mondal et al. 2011, 2012, 2016; Feng et al. 2012; Wu et al. 2016).
In this paper, we investigate the effectiveness of particle filtration using a fully coupled computational-fluid-dynamics (CFD)/DEM approach featuring polydispersed, adhesive solid particles. We found that an increase in particle adhesion reduces the amount of solid in the liquid filtrate that passes through the opening of a wire-wrapped screen, and that a solid pack of particle agglomerates is formed over the screen with time. We also determined that increasing particle adhesion gives rise to a decrease in packing density and a diminished pressure drop across the solid pack covering the screen. This finding is further supported by a Voronoi tessellation analysis, which reveals an increase in porosity of the solid pack with elevated particle adhesion. The results of this study demonstrate that increasing the level of particle agglomeration, such as by using an adhesion-promoting chemical additive, has beneficial effects on particle filtration. An important application of these findings is the design and optimization of sand-control processes for a hydrocarbon well with excessive sand production, which is a major challenge in the oil and gas industry.
| File Size | 1 MB | Number of Pages | 14 |
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