Study on temperature distribution along wellbore of fracturing horizontal wells in oil reservoir

Abstract

Abstract The application of distributed temperature sensors (DTS) to monitor producing zones of horizontal well through a real-time measurement of a temperature profile is becoming increasingly popular. Those parameters, such as flow rate along wellbore, well completion method, skin factor, are potentially related to the information from DTS. Based on mass-, momentum-, and energy-balance equations, this paper established a coupled model to study on temperature distribution along wellbore of fracturing horizontal wells by considering skin factor in order to predict wellbore temperature distribution and analyze the factors influencing the wellbore temperature profile. The models presented in this paper account for heat convective, fluid expansion, heat conduction, and viscous dissipative heating. Arriving temperature and wellbore temperature curves are plotted by computer iterative calculation. The non-perforated and perforated sections show different temperature distribution along wellbore. Through the study on the sensitivity analysis of skin factor and flow rate, we come to the conclusion that the higher skin factor generates larger temperature increase near the wellbore, besides, temperature along wellbore is related to both skin factors and flow rate. Temperature response type curves show that the larger skin factor we set, the less temperature augmenter from toe to heel could be. In addition, larger flow rate may generate higher wellbore temperature.