Sand production by hydraulic erosion during multicycle steam stimulation: An analytical study

Abstract

The production of sand particles associated with the reservoir hydrocarbons becomes one of the most common problems a well of multi cycle steam stimulation may experience during reservoir lifetime. Therefore, it is essential to the investigation of sand particles migration and sand production mechanisms coupled with fluid flow for optimization design of injection and profile control parameters. This paper presents a model based on hydraulic erosion with heat transfer that can analysis release of sand fines under high temperature. The model describes the continuous hydraulic erosion of rock core by the mass conservation equation and particle transport equation, moreover, the sand production and heat transfer are connected through it is coupled with steam injection model. Then, a coupled nonlinear governing equation is derived by using porosity and liquefied sand concentration to evaluate pore enlargement behavior of flow channel and predict sand production behavior under different steam breakthrough channel. Finally, in terms of numerical processing for model, an effectively difference solution method is adopted based on PDE module in COMSOL Multiphysics. The simulation results show that the sand production model can effectively couple heat and sand production, and the relationship between sand production and channeling flow can be studied through seepage process. The degree of steam channeling affects sand production, that is, sand production increases with the increase of the number of steam breakout channels. In addition, it reveals why the sand production can be effectively slowed down by adjusting reasonable injection parameters for multicycle steam stimulation.