A Review on the Application of Multiphase Twin Screw Pump as a Downhole Wet Gas Compressor to Improve Gas Wells Recovery Factor

Abstract

By introducing a multiphase twin screw pump as an artificial lifting device inside the well tubing (downhole) for wet gas compression application; i.e. gas volume fraction (GVF) higher than 95%, the unproductive or commercially unattractive gas wells can be revived and made commercially productive once again. Above strategy provides energy industry with an invaluable option to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions by reviving gas production from already existing infrastructure thereby reducing new exploratory and development efforts. At the same time above strategy enables energy industry to meet society’s demand for affordable energy throughout the critical energy transition from predominantly fossil fuels based resources to hybrid energy system of renewables and gas. This paper summarizes the research activities related to the applications involving multiphase twin screw pump for gas volume fraction (GVF) higher than 95% and outlines the opportunity that this new frontier of multiphase fluid research provides. By developing an understanding and quantifying the factors that influence volumetric efficiency of the multiphase twin screw pump, the novel concept of productivity improvement by a downhole wet gas compression using above technology can be made practicable and commercially more attractive than other production improvement strategies available today. Review and evaluation of the results of mathematical and experimental models for multiphase twin screw pump for applications with GVF of more than 95% has provided valuable insights in to multiphase physics in the gap leakage domains of pump and this increases confidence that novel theoretical concept of downhole wet gas compression using multiphase twin screw pump that is described in this paper, is practically achievable through further research and improvements.