Feedback control of proppant bank heights during hydraulic fracturing for enhanced productivity in shale formations

Abstract

In hydraulic fracturing of shale formations, compared to conventional reservoirs, the fracturing fluid injected is of low‐viscosity and hence during pumping the proppant settles significantly, forming a proppant bank. Motivated by this consideration, we initially develop a high‐fidelity process model of hydraulic fracturing to describe the dominant proppant settling behavior during hydraulic fracturing process. Second, a novel remeshing strategy is developed to handle the high computational requirement due to moving boundaries. Third, a section‐based optimization method is employed to obtain key fracture design parameters for enhanced productivity in shale formations subject to given fracturing resources. Fourth, a reduced‐order model is constructed to design a Kalman filter and to synthesize a real‐time model‐based feedback control system by explicitly taking into account actuator limitations, process safety and economic considerations. We demonstrate that the proposed control scheme can regulate the uniformity of proppant bank heights along the fracture at the end of pumping. © 2017 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 64: 1638–1650, 2018