Current Status of my Research& Wellbore Heat Flow Modeling

M. Bahonar, J. Azaiez, Z. Chen
92

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to model the wellbore heat flow. There are several challenges in the well testing of the gas reservoirs, first interpretation of fractures in the reservoirs, and second the well test design. To tackle the problem, the dynamic coupled wellbore/ reservoir simulator should be applied.

A fast numerical transient non-isothermal multiphase wellbore simulator has been developed and validated through comparisons with field experiments and prediction of other models. Then two important issues related to heat transfer in the wellbore simulation that have received little or no attention in the literature, have been thoroughly analyzed using this thermal wellbore simulator, and its merits for accurate prediction of casing temperature have been demonstrated. The first issue pertains to systematic and rigorous comparisons between some of the existing models for estimating the formation temperature, and the second deals with the development of new approaches to model the transient heat transfer from the wellbore tubing up to the formation. Appropriates recommendations have been also made in dealing with each issue to achieve higher accuracy for a given wellbore simulation process.