Experimental Investigation of Oil/Water Emulsion Rheology in Electric Submersible Pump and its Effect on the Pump Head Performance

Abstract

Abstract The presence of formation water throughout the oil well production lifetime is inevitable and consequently forming the dispersion or the emulsion due to the immiscibility of those two phases and the strong shear force acting in a rotating ESP. The formation of stable emulsion close to the inversion point will significantly increase the effective viscosity of an emulsion. This paper will present an experimental investigation of emulsion rheology inside the ESP and its effect on ESP performance under various oil viscosities and different water cuts (WC). Multi stages radial type ESP were assembled into a viscous flow loop which was initially developed by Zhang (2017). Emulsions at each WC formed from different oil viscosities, similar oil density, and surface tension. Multistage ESP was used to circulate oil/water emulsions in a close flow loop. Mass flowmeter measures both mass flow rate and fluid density, and the effective emulsion viscosity derived from an in-line pipe viscometer (PV) which locates downstream of the ESP discharge. The pressure transmitter is occupied in each pump stage to measure the pressure increment. The experiment results present in terms of pump boosting pressure at each water cut and the flow rate delivered by the pump. A Single-phase oil experiment was run at a different temperature to validate the accuracy of the PV. The data discrepancy of PV's viscosity and rotational viscometer is ±6%. The experiment results captured the emulsion's effective viscosity trend as a function of WC. A significant increase of effective viscosity close to the inversion point was observed, and it occurs due to a higher number of water droplets and hydrogen bonds which lead to an increase in hydrodynamic forces thus generating a tight emulsion. The experiment results reveal that a higher oil viscosity 70 cp reaches an inversion point at 30% - 35% WC. Meanwhile, for lower oil viscosity 45 cp reaches the inversion point at 35% - 40% WC since the turbulence increases with the decrease of oil viscosity. The increasing of effective viscosity in the water-oil emulsion induces higher pressure loss in the pump due to high friction loss, and it deteriorates the pump head. Nevertheless, as the WC increases further, the pump head will advance close to the single-phase water performance since the water turns as the continuous phase. Eventually, we can observe a prudent relationship in the pump performance in the change of emulsions effective viscosity as a function of WC. The inversion point phenomena occur at a different range of WC for different oil viscosity. Therefore, it is vital to set the possible range of operational conditions away from the inversion point. A better understanding of these aforementioned issues will lead to an accurate ESP design for optimum well performance.