STUDY OF CALCITE PRECIPITATION IN WELL CONDITIONS USING THE DDPM-DPM APPROACH

Abstract

The extraction of oil results in problems such as the scale formation in the various stages of the production process. The scale reduces all or part of the flow conduits, increasing the pressure drop and reducing oil production. In this work the three dimensional, transient, turbulent, biphasic problem is solved by combining the Dense Discrete Phase Model (DDPM) and Discrete Element Method (DEM), to analyze the influence of certain parameters on the particle deposition, which represents the calcium carbonate scale formation, inside the wall of a horizontal pipeline at well conditions. The obtained results show that particle deposition is higher at lower Reynolds numbers. The results also show that the use of DEM model is more representative, but due to the high computational effort required, it application in complex geometries must be carefully evaluated.