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Imaging of gas–liquid annular flows for underbalanced drilling using electrical resistance tomography
Na, Wei Jia, Jiabin Yu, Xin Faraj, Yousef Wang, Qiang Meng, Ying-feng Wang, Mi Sun, Wantong
Na, Wei
Jia, Jiabin
Yu, Xin
Faraj, Yousef
Wang, Qiang
Meng, Ying-feng
Wang, Mi
Sun, Wantong
Advisors
Editors
Other Contributors
EPub Date
Publication Date
2015-07-21
Submitted Date
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Abstract
The underbalanced drilling technique, which is also known as managed-pressure drilling, is playing an important role in oil and gas sector, as it reduces common conventional drilling problems such as minimal drilling rates and formation damage, differential sticking and lost circulation. Flow regime monitoring is one of the key topics in annular multiphase flow research, particularly for underbalanced drilling technique. Prediction of the prevailing flow regime in an annulus is of particular importance in the design and installation of underbalanced drilling facilities. Especially, for establishing a suitable pressure drop model based on the characteristics of the active flow regime. The methods of flow regime prediction (or visualisation) in an annulus that are currently in use are very limited, this is evidently due to poor accuracy or they are simply not applicable to underbalanced drilling operation in practice. Therefore, this paper presents a monitoring method, in which Electrical Resistance Tomography (ERT) is used to rapidly image the prevailing flow regime in an annulus with a metallic inner pipe. Experiments were carried out using an air–waterflow loop with a test section 50 mm diameter flow pipe. The two-phase air–waterflow regimes are visualised in the upward vertical annulus with a radius ratio (r/R) 0.4.This paper highlights the visualisation results of only three flow regimes, namely bubble flow, transitional bubble-slug flow and slug flow. The flow regimes are visualised through axial images stacked from50 mm diameter-pixels of 2D tomograms reconstructed with the Conjugate Gradient Method (SCG). Gas volume fraction profiles within the annular flow channel are also illustrated. The profiles are extracted using the Modified Sensitivity coefficient Back-Projection (MSBP) method with a sensitivity matrix generated from a realistic phantom in the finite element method software. The results are compared with visual observations (e.g. photographs) of the active flow regime at the time of ERT measurements.
Citation
Wei, N., Jia, J., Yu, X., Faraj, Y., Wang, Q., Meng, Y., Wang, M. (2015). Imaging of gas-liquid annular flows for underbalanced drilling using Electrical Resistance Tomography. Flow Measurement and Instrumentation, 46, 319-326
Publisher
Elsevier
Journal
Flow Measurement and Instrumentation
Research Unit
DOI
10.1016/j.flowmeasinst.2015.07.003
PubMed ID
PubMed Central ID
Type
Article
Language
Description
Series/Report no.
ISSN
0955-5986