Temperature Modeling for Nodal Analysis

Predicting accurate temperature profiles in flowing wells can greatly improve the design of production facilities in petroleum and geothermal engineering. Temperature profiles help to calculate accurate two-phase-flow pressure drop predictions, which, in turn, can improve an artificial-lift system design. Existing temperature correlations are usually limited to a specific range of data, and do not always give accurate results because they do not consider the effects of different fluids in the annulus and the cooling and heating of the fluid resulting from phase change. The primary objective of this study is to develop a non-isothermal wellbore simulator to model steady-state fluid flow (such as production from, or injection to, a reservoir) and the associated heat flow. Starting from an existing numerical well bore flow model in MATLAB, this work aims at implementing a coupled flow-heat transfer well bore model. To solve the governing differential equations in each interval of the well, a fourth-order Runge-Kutta method is used with a standard MATLAB function that integrates the pressure and temperature gradient equations simultaneously. The surrounding formation temperature and the flowing fluids thermodynamic properties are updated in each well depth intervals to account for changes in heat-transfer rate between the wellbore fluid and the formation. Model validation has been performed by running four field examples. In all cases, the model results are in good agreement with the field data.Civil Engineering and GeosciencesGeoscience & EngineeringPetroleum Engineerin