Abstract
The maturing oil fields with increasing water production can pose a challenging produced water handling and disposal issues. This paper presents a numerical study of a motorless hydrocyclone to enhance understanding of the downhole oil-water separation. The turbulence of fluid flow is obtained using K- Realizable Turbulence model for complex swirl dominated flow, while the interface between hydrocarbon and water is described using the Discrete Phase model. In this approach, factors which contribute to the hydrocyclone separation instability were discussed. Discussion is then extended to the relationship of residence time with pressure difference between overflow and underflow. These pressure differences are able to relate to pressure condition for high water cut well which require downhole separation.
Highlights
An increasing water production in oil and gas wells due to water influx has encouraged the industry to investigate solution to minimize the impact of concurrent production of unwanted water in the wells
Water production in mature field is unavoidable; oil is commonly accompanied by an underlying aquifer, as production rate is increased, oil water contact (OWC) increases until water breakthrough into the wellbore
The unavoidable premature water breakthrough or water coning could happen due to high pressure drawdown around the wellbore and high mobility of water than oil, where water viscosity much lesser than the oil, water relative permeability much greater than oil
Summary
An increasing water production in oil and gas wells due to water influx has encouraged the industry to investigate solution to minimize the impact of concurrent production of unwanted water in the wells. This paper will focus on the exploitation of downhole separation without the use of electric submersible pump Such concept requires relative positioning of the zones of a high pressure production layers on top and a low pressure water zone below to complete hydrocyclone separation as implemented in oil field Malaysia. Experimental investigation and related empirical models were set up to cover ranges of operating condition and hydrocyclone geometry, for example Liquid-Liquid cylindrical cyclone for inlet velocity below 0.8m/s [2]. These experimental approaches are found to be expensive and empirical models are restricted to the parameters which were used in the experiments. The hydrocyclone was modeled and simulated using ANSYS-Fluent 14 commercial software to study the effect of residence time versus pressure difference between overflow and underflow
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