Experimental Study On Gas-Liquid-Solid Multiphase Flow

The largest quantities of petroleum produced globally comes from regions with unconsolidated formations and high sand production potential during well life.In such a case,the operator has three options: complete wells with downhole sand exclusion systems,recomplete the well by installing sand exclusion systems at a later date when sand production begins or do not install downhole sand exclusion systems but manage sand production by designing the facilities to handle sand if it is produced.The conventional downhole sand completions strongly affect the overall well performance due to additional pressure drop and several other.As a result,sand management technology is largely gaining attention.The Primary objective of this thesis was to investigate experimentally the particle transport behavior in gas-solid and gas-liquid-solid multiphase flow in pipes.The scope of the experimental study was definitely limited to a handful of gas-liquidsolid three phase flow conditions.Certainly,the ranges of possible sand sizes and types,water/gas flow rate ratios,pipe diameters and orientation is far greater than could be experimentally investigated in any individual project.Based on this,an experimental multiphase flow loop was constructed to help in the analysis of minimum sand carrying capacity conditions for air-sand and air-water-sand environments.Also,to investigate the maximum sand carrying capacity under the different conditions.The behavior of sand in multiphase was found to be dependent on the flow pattern existing in the flow line,while the flow regime was strongly dependent on the pipe orientation and water/gas ratio.Therefore,to shed more light on the understanding of the behaviour of sand in multiphase flow,series of experiments were conducted.The effect of pipe diameter,sand size/ density,pipe orientation and water gas ratio were investigated and results were presented in details.