Fracturing Design Using Perfect Support Fluids for Selected Fracture Proppant Concentrations in Vertical Fractures

Harrington, Larry J.; Hannah, R.R.

doi:10.2118/5642-ms

Cited by 22 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…The model that describes the rate of fluid leak‐off into the rock formation per unit height in the direction orthogonal to the elliptic fracture plane during the fracture propagation is presented as follow

U = \frac{2 C_{leak}}{\sqrt{t - τ (x)}}

where C leak is the overall fluid leak‐off coefficient, and

τ (x)

is the time at which the fracture propagation has arrived at the location x for the first time. For ease of computation, in this work,

τ (x)

is taken to be

t / 2

…”

Section: Dynamic Modeling Of Hydraulic Fracturing Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Feedback control of proppant bank heights during hydraulic fracturing for enhanced productivity in shale formations

et al. 2017

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In hydraulic fracturing of shale formations, compared to conventional reservoirs, the fracturing fluid injected is of lowviscosity and hence during pumping the proppant settles significantly, forming a proppant bank. Motivated by this consideration, we initially develop a high-fidelity process model of hydraulic fracturing to describe the dominant proppant settling behavior during hydraulic fracturing process. Second, a novel remeshing strategy is developed to handle the high computational requirement due to moving boundaries. Third, a section-based optimization method is employed to obtain key fracture design parameters for enhanced productivity in shale formations subject to given fracturing resources. Fourth, a reduced-order model is constructed to design a Kalman filter and to synthesize a real-time model-based feedback control system by explicitly taking into account actuator limitations, process safety and economic considerations. We demonstrate that the proposed control scheme can regulate the uniformity of proppant bank heights along the fracture at the end of pumping.

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U = \frac{2 C_{leak}}{\sqrt{t - τ (x)}}

where C leak is the overall fluid leak‐off coefficient, and

τ (x)

is the time at which the fracture propagation has arrived at the location x for the first time. For ease of computation, in this work,

τ (x)

is taken to be

t / 2

…”

Section: Dynamic Modeling Of Hydraulic Fracturing Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Feedback control of proppant bank heights during hydraulic fracturing for enhanced productivity in shale formations

et al. 2017

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“…Harrington and Hannah's (1975) reasoning for this was expressed as due to the inability to obtain uniform and complete coverage of the fracture with a partial monolayer, insufficient proppant strength to support the load, loss of fracture width due to proppant embedment and, potentially deleterious non-Darcy flow effects in the relatively narrow propped fracture.…”

Section: Proppant Transportmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fracturing Fluid Effects on Young's Modulus and Embedment in the Niobrara Formation

Corapcioglu

Miskimins

Prasad

2014

SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition

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New discoveries of shale plays and their abundant resources have directed the petroleum industry towards their development. Production from shale reservoirs has grown significantly in the past few decades spurred by successful development of plays such as the Barnett and Bakken Shales. Due to their low permeability, hydraulic fracturing is a necessity for economic production in these reservoirs, and the success of these reservoirs is dependent on optimizing hydraulic fracturing designs which are in turn dictated by an understanding of the mechanical properties of these reservoirs. The geometric growth and conductivity of fractures in these reservoirs are influenced by many factors. Young's modulus reduction, which essentially means weakening of the formation, is one of these factors. This reduction damages the reservoir and makes embedment of proppants into the fracture face a detrimental effect on fracturing success. The goal of this research project is to focus on how different fracturing fluids change the Young's modulus of the Niobrara shale and how this change affect the proppant embedment and conductivity when commonly used proppants are subjected to pressure tests in the effected Niobrara shale samples.A series of tests and associated methodology were developed and applied to investigate how the Niobrara shale's Young's modulus is affected by various fracturing fluids and to quantify associated proppant embedment. In order to achieve this, core samples at various depths from the same well were selected from the cores. The selection was made based on mineralogy data. Samples containing the highest, lowest, and median calcite percentage and porosity were selected to be imaged with QEMSCAN in order to understand the mineralogy of the samples being used. Eight selected samples were then saturated with four fracturing fluids (freshwater, KCl, KCl+friction reducer, and freshwater+KCl substitute). Four of these samples were the "expansion" samples to see if the results were more dependent on the fluid selections. Two additional samples were heated with freshwater and KCl at 180°F for five days to investigate the heat effect on Young's modulus and embedment in comparison to room iv temperature experiments. In order to compare in-situ saturated Young's modulus values to dry Young's modulus values of cores obtained by nanoindenter, the Gassmann fluid substitution equation was used.This method showed significant Young's modulus difference between in-situ saturated and dry core values.The saturated/room temperature and saturated/heated cores were then subjected to 3030 psi for one hour while selected proppants were placed in between them. Four different proppant types (16/30 Brady, 20/40 Ottawa, 20/40 Ceramic, and 20/40 RCS) were used in this research. Various combinations of cores affected by fluids and proppants were made in order to simulate actual treatment designs. The cores were also scanned by scanning acoustic microscope (SAM) before and after they were subjected to pressure with proppants, so that...

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“…Unfortunately, the final distributions of proppant grains are virtually impossible to image nowadays, and direct numerical simulations of suspension flows in narrow apertures have just begun to emerge (Shiozawa & McClure, 2016;Tomac & Gutierrez, 2015). The monolayer configuration has been traditionally considered as either difficult or impossible to achieve and treated more of a curiosity rather than technologically relevant scenario (Harrington & Hannah, 1975;Wendorff & Alderman, 1969), however, this view has been challenged in recent works (Brannon et al, 2004;Palisch et al, 2010). It may in fact be that a general shift toward slickwater fracturing, and technological advances such as ultralight proppants (Gaurav et al, 2010) promote the developed of the monolayer configuration.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effective Transmissivity of a Plane‐Walled Fracture With Circular Cylindrical Obstacles

Jasinski

Dąbrowski

2018

JGR Solid Earth

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Stimulated and propped fractures provide the conductive pathways in low matrix permeability rocks. We study the impact of fracture aperture and proppant size and fraction on the effective transmissivity of a stimulated fracture filled with a partial monolayer of proppant grains. The proppant grains are treated as circular cylindrical obstacles, and the fracture walls are planar. The key geometric parameters are the obstacle fraction f and the ratio between the fracture aperture and the obstacle diameter α. We use three‐dimensional Stokes flow numerical simulations to demonstrate that the fracture flow model given by the Reynolds equations may largely overestimate the flow rate. To circumvent the inability of the Reynolds model to fulfill the no‐slip boundary condition at the rims of the obstacles, we use the Brinkman flow model adapted to the case of fracture flow. The relative difference between the effective transmissivities computed with the Stokes and Brinkman models for systems with multiple obstacles is below 10% for fractions up to 0.5. We use the Brinkman model to study the effective transmissivity of a plane‐walled fracture with circular cylindrical obstacles. Systematic numerical simulations show that the normalized effective transmissivity is predominantly dependent on f and α, and the effects of obstacle ordering are minor. The presented numerical results can be used by petroleum engineers for estimating transmissivities of propped fractures under in situ conditions. The model can also be applied to microfluidic systems and for deriving first‐order estimates of the effective transmissivity of rough‐walled, natural fractures with load‐bearing contact areas.

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Fracturing Design Using Perfect Support Fluids for Selected Fracture Proppant Concentrations in Vertical Fractures

Abstract: This paper presents a method of scheduling proppants in perfect or near perfect transport fluids to meet predetermined proppant concentrations in the fracture. factors affecting reservoir improvement are considered by one computer program.

Cited by 22 publications

References 2 publications

Feedback control of proppant bank heights during hydraulic fracturing for enhanced productivity in shale formations

Feedback control of proppant bank heights during hydraulic fracturing for enhanced productivity in shale formations

Fracturing Fluid Effects on Young's Modulus and Embedment in the Niobrara Formation

The Effective Transmissivity of a Plane‐Walled Fracture With Circular Cylindrical Obstacles

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