Validation of Heat Transfer Performance of Electrical Submersible Motor Using CFD

Abstract

In oil field applications, the Electrical Submersible Pumping (ESP) unit (comprised of multistage pump, seal and motor) is placed inside a wellbore to provide necessary energy to lift reservoir fluids from the formation to the surface when the energy in the reservoir is not sufficient to lift the fluid to the surface. ESP motors produce heat while operating. The motors are cooled by the well fluid that passes the motor while being pumped. Many well fluids have very limited heat carrying capacity, resulting in higher operating temperature within the motor. Only a limited number of studies have been conducted that have analyzed the inside temperature rise in the motor. A parametric study has been conducted using the computational fluid dynamic software Ansys CFX to examine the profile of the temperature rise in the motor. The computational model is validated by experimental data which showed that the computational model predicts the temperature with 95% accuracy. Therefore, this computational model effectively represents the experimentally determined temperature distribution of the motor.