Multi-phase Flow in Oil and Gas Well Drilling

Wiley - HEP Co-PublicationThe past few decades have seen a great development in multi-phase flow of petroleum engineering. But some key issues hold back the application of multi-phase flow in gas and oil drilling and production, such as flow pattern transition mechanism lack of clarity, flow patterns criteria not enveloped, non-considering phase transition, reduction for multi-phase flow calculation, et al. The book provides the methods to solve these problems. Studies of gas & oil drilling and production often involve multi-phase flow, and it is a growing trend to develop systematic modeling and simulation approaches for multi-phase flow problems in UBD and well control. First the book discusses gas-liquid flow pattern transition mechanism and gives the new flow patterns which involve supercritical state of acid gas and their transition criteria through experiments. The relationship between void fraction wave and flow pattern transition which indicate the growth rate of void fraction wave influences bubble flow destabilizing are then discussed. Next, the new seven components of the multi-phase flow model considering phase transition between gas and oil or gas and hydrate and its application in well control on shore and offshore is covered. The seven components include gas, oil, water, cuttings, drilling fluid, acid gas, and natural gas hydrate. Finally the book discusses the seven components multi-phase flow model and its application in UBD including gas drilling, annulus aerated drilling, riser aerated drilling, low density drilling fluid drilling.