Yanbo Wang

Date of Award

January 2018

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Petroleum Engineering

First Advisor

Kegang Ling

Abstract

In the oil industry, after the wellbore is drilled into a reservoir, oil and gas will flow into the bore hole and can be transported to the earth’s surface through tubing. Multiphase flow will take place in the pipe. Flow regime has a significant influence on production. For example, the slug flow will cause a huge pressure-drop in the surface system and can even cause a shut-down of the well.Therefore, it is important to test two-phase upwards flow in the pipe.

Different kinds of characteristics are used to distinguish between different kinds of flow patterns. I introduce the development of flow pattern and some methods which were applied to select and determine essential parameters, such as volume fluxes rate, fluid density, viscosity, and surface tension to classify flow regime. The pressure change in the vertical tube is a summation of three factors: friction and liquid-gas interface, gravity, acceleration changing. And making an explain of the pressure drop in sucker rod pumping systems, friction force due to the movement of the plunger and the rod, buoyant force, and gravity force are including in the model.

In order to test flow regime changing and pressure-drop in two-phase upwards flow. I created a two-phase flow loop experiment, and choose to use different diameter tubes to have a comparison. The water and air flow velocities range from 0.01 to 20 m/s and 0.05 to 10 m/s, separately. I also set up a model in Ansys-Fluent to simulate the pressure drop and flow regime change in the test tube. With the comparison of the simulation result and the real experiment. The pressure-drop depends on both the diameter changing and water/air inlet superficial velocities, both of the results are coincide.

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