Experimental Evaluation of Wellbore Flow Models Applied to Worst-Case-Discharge Calculations for Oil Wells

Abstract

Summary An experimental and numerical investigation is presented in this study to verify the accuracy of wellbore flow models applied to worst–case–discharge (WCD) calculations. Wellbore flow models often used in WCD calculations show errors of more than 100% when compared to experimental data for large–diameter pipes. However, for low gas/liquid ratios, there is a reasonable agreement between experimental data and simulation results for all wellbore flow models tested, with errors lower than 10%. This study uses the comparison between experimental data and simulation results to provide guidance on how to improve these flow correlations and proposes how to use the flow models to obtain improved predictions on WCD calculations.