A new analytical method for transient heat conduction in composite disks applied to thermal plug and abandonment of oil wells

Abstract

A new hybrid method for transient heat conduction problems is developed and applied to simulate a Plug and Abandonment (P&A) operation of oil wells. An oil well is approximated by concentric disks in a one-dimensional configuration, which allows for use of polar coordinates. The application of the Separation of Variables Method (SVM) is used as the analytical framework for the solution of the conductive heat transfer arising from a volumetric heat source located in the center of the disks. The SVM is able to solve only time-independent boundary conditions. However, using the Duhamel's theorem, the solution determined with the SVM can be used to achieve the solution when both time-dependent boundary conditions and internal heat generation are prescribed. Lastly, for verification purposes, a commercial software that solves the transient temperature field by means of numerical procedures, providing reliability to the analytical method proposed in this work.