A CFD study of steam injection tubing heat losses

Abstract

To increase heavy oil production, the petroleum industry uses thermal recovery methods, and the steam injection is one of the most common techniques. Steam generated at the surface reaches the oil reservoir through the injection tubing. Heat transfer between the steam and the injection well surroundings the tubing is analyzed in this work, the challenge in this process to minimize it. It is presented the three-dimensional simulation of the multiphase turbulent liquid-vapor flow along with a 100 m wellbore domain composed by injection tubing, annular space, casing, and rock formation. With the software ANSYS CFX® 15.0, the response of a low thermal conductivity tubing and formation temperature to steam injection at 80% of quality, injected at two different flow rates, is evaluated. The insulated material tubing (IMT) has the best performance compared to the conventional configuration, for both 1.2 kg/s and 3.3 kg/s flow rates. Additionally, the higher flow rate shows higher steam quality results when using a conventional tubing while maintaining 0.13% more quality at the tubing output.