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PETROMAKS2-Stort program petroleum

MUST: MUltiphase flow in STeeply inclined pipes

Alternative title: MUST: Flerfasestrømning i Bratte Rør

Awarded: NOK 12.4 mill.

In recent decades, petroleum production has moved to deeper waters with wells and risers covering depths exceeding 1000 m. In such configurations, the dominating contribution to pressure drop may come from the wells and risers. The pressure drop at full production, together with flow stability at reduced production, are two key design parameters in multiphase production. However, the research on multiphase flow in steeply inclined pipes is very scant due to limitations of the operating conditions in most flow labs. As a result of the lack of data, existing flow models use an interpolation between the correlations for near-horizontal and vertical flow to cover this gap in inclination angles. This simple handling of models significantly increases the uncertainties in predictions by commercial simulators for design of multiphase transportation systems, potentially leading to costly design errors. This project focuses on closing the knowledge gap related to multiphase flow in steeply inclined pipes for production in wells, risers and flowlines. This will be accomplished by high-quality data from two world-class multiphase flow labs, namely IFE’s Well Flow Loop, a part of the Norwegian Infrastructure for Multiphase Flows, and IFE’s FALCON CO2 flow loop, which is a part of the ECCSEL infrastructure for CO2 transport studies. The research activities will give the type of insight necessary for developing more accurate models and improve the simulator tools. The success of this project is of great relevance for improving the safe and efficient operations of oil and gas infrastructures. These new benchmark data and more accurate models developed based on these data will ensure effective design of the new fields in deep water and maximize the utilization of the existing infrastructure, thus improving the cost efficiency by reducing the CAPEX and OPEX on the NCS.

Petroleum production has moved to deeper waters with wells and risers covering long depths. In addition, there is a large potential in utilizing the existing infrastructure to produce many small fields on the NCS, and risers and wells are typically designed with a major part of the trajectory placed in the steeply inclined angle range. The pressure drop at full production, together with flow stability at reduced production, are two key design parameters in multiphase production. However, the research on multiphase flow in steeply inclined pipes is very scant due to limitations of the operating conditions in most flow labs. Due to lack of data, existing flow models use an interpolation between the correlations for near-horizontal and vertical flow to cover this gap of inclination angles. This simple handling of models significantly increases the uncertainties in predictions by commercial simulators for design of multiphase produce and transport systems. MUST aims at contributing to closing these gaps in multiphase flow production in wells, risers and flowlines. Systematic experiments will be performed in two world-class flow loops to establish a more balanced dataset for multiphase flow with high-quality data for steeply inclined flow. The data generated from two loops with different scales, pipe materials and fluid properties will also be used to develop scaling rules to solve the principal challenge of scaling between field and lab conditions for multiphase flow models. The detailed local and global measurements on the flow field will reveal the underlying physical mechanism of multiphase flow. The research partners of IFE and UiO will work closely with the industrial partners to maximize the value of the outcomes from the project and the direct use of results in industrial R&D and academia. A PhD and a postdoc. will work together with the research teams of IFE and UiO from design of the experiments, data analysis to understanding the physics of the phenomena.

Funding scheme:

PETROMAKS2-Stort program petroleum