Large-scale study of the effect of wellbore geometry on integrated reservoir-wellbore flow

Abstract

Extraction of coal seam gas (CSG) prior to mining is crucial for reducing the potential risks of gas outburst and explosions during underground coal mining as well as gas production purposes. Many numerical and experimental studies have been carried out to identify the factors affecting the gas productivity. These factors include coal properties, gas content and wellbore geometries. Two different flow conditions determine the gas production efficiency: The gas flow inside the wellbore injected from wall, and the flow through porous coal medium. The full understanding of simultaneous flow of fluids through reservoir and wellbore is critical for analysing the reservoir behaviour. However, previous studies examined the flow of these fluids separately. In this research, a large scale three-dimensional model for simulation of integrated reservoir-wellbore flow is developed to study the effect of wellbore geometry on flow characteristics and wellbore productivity. Four different wellbore diameters of 0.075, 0.10, 0.125 and 0.15 m as well as three different lengths of 50, 100, and 150 m were chosen to accomplish the parametric study of wellbore geometry. It is assumed that the wellbores were in a steady-state condition for two different single phase scenarios of water and methane gas flow. The simulation results were validated against the pressure drop models for internal single phase gas and water flow reported in the literature. The obtained results revealed that increasing the wellbore diameter led to reduction of fluid pressure in the coal seam. Regarding the effect of wellbore length, it was observed that at a specific distance from wellbore outlet, the pressure distribution is independent of the wellbore length and upstream effects. It is also shown that wellbore production could be enhanced by increasing the diameter and the length of wellbore for both gas and liquid flow. The developed integrated framework can be used further for study of any enhanced gas recovery method by changing the boundary conditions based on the physical model.