Relative Viscosity Model for Water-In-Oil Emulsion in Electrical Submersible Pumps: Comparing the ESP Head in a Real Scenario

Abstract

Abstract Emulsions are common during oil production, and this is the case of the Peregrino field, e.g. . In several fields, oil and reservoir fluids can be produced through Electrical Submersible Pumps (ESP) and the formation of emulsion affects the ESP system, its run life, and the production itself. The viscosity increase due to emulsion formation severely hampers the ESP performance, requiring an increase in energy consumption on the platform to keep the same production rate. This work presents an initial validation of the model proposed by Bulgarelli (2021) to predict the water-in-oil emulsion effective viscosity within the ESP and its impact on lift capacity. The model can aid the design of the ESP system and can be used as a flow rate estimation tool during ESP production. The initial validation was performed using data from water-in-oil emulsion production of the two wells (A and B) in the Peregrino field, which use two different ESP models. The validation was divided into two parts: the first corresponds to Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 3 and the second, TRL 4, according to ISO 20815:2018. Firstly, well tests data were used to calibrate and test the model for initial validation of the TRL 3. Operation data of these two wells were then used for the initial validation of the TRL 4 in the second part. In the first step, measured and predicted ESP head were compared. Mean Absolute Percentage Errors (MAPE) of 3.6% and 0.8% were obtained for Wells A and B, respectively. In the second part, both the measured and predicted ESP dimensionless head and the measured and predicted differential pressure were compared. From these comparisons, promising results were observed for both wells' operations. However, more oil data field is necessary to complete the TRL 3 and TRL 4 validation.