A New Comprehensive Model for Predicting the Pressure Drop of Flow in the Horizontal Wellbore

Abstract

Over the past two decades, the modeling of flow in a perforated pipe with influx through wall openings has been recognized as a key topic especially in the field of horizontal wells. In this paper, based on the theoretical analysis and previous research achievements, combining with the new measured data sets stemming from the large-scale experimental apparatus designed and constructed recently at China University of Petroleum (CUP), a new comprehensive model has been developed for the prediction of pressure drop regarding single-phase flow in horizontal perforated pipes with wall influx, in which new correlations for calculating the hydraulic friction factor and momentum correction factor of variable mass flow are given. The presented model is then implemented using the visual basic.net package and validated against two data sets obtained on single-phase water flow and single-phase oil flow. Predictions of the new model and frequently used Ouyang model are also compared based on the new experimental data. Results show that the model given in this article can not only properly represent the complex mechanisms of flow in the horizontal wellbore, such as the resistance caused by wall perforations and the drag reduction or so-called lubrication effect caused by wall injection, but also has a preferable prediction accuracy. Compared with the water flow data and the oil flow data, the absolute average percentage errors of the proposed model are, respectively, 4.5% and 5.0%, which demonstrates better performance and wider application range than Ouyang model.