Design and numerical study of active cooling system of measurement while drilling for high temperature based on supersonic

Abstract

Measurement while drilling (MWD) plays an important role in controlling well trajectory, improving drilling efficiency and saving drilling cost. In recent years, a large number of high-temperature wells have appeared, which makes the traditional MWD instruments no longer applicable. So far, no active cooling method has been successfully applied to MWD instruments for high-temperature oil and gas wells. This paper presents a new active cooling method for air drilling by utilizing the throttling and cooling of drilling gas, and the cooling system is designed. An axisymmetric numerical model of internal fluid is established, and different drilling gas flow channel design methods are discussed. The research results indicate that the wall temperature of the cooling section is much higher than the center fluid temperature, but lower than the ambient temperature, and can be used for active cooling of downhole drilling instruments. Compared with other design methods, the supersonic nozzle designed using the Bezier method has better parallelism of the gas in cooling section. The diffusion capability of straight wall diffuser is better than that of curved wall diffuser, and it can withstand greater back pressure. For straight wall diffuser, increasing the throat length and reducing the contraction and expansion angle can improve the diffusion capacity, but they also lead to a longer diffuser.