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Record W4313304419 · doi:10.2118/1122-0087-jpt

Technology Focus: Flow Assurance (November 2022)

2022· article· en· W4313304419 on OpenAlexaboutno aff
Galen Dino

Bibliographic record

VenueJournal of Petroleum Technology · 2022
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldEngineering
TopicOffshore Engineering and Technologies
Canadian institutionsnot available
Fundersnot available
KeywordsSluggingFlow assurancePipeline transportPetroleum engineeringSeparator (oil production)Multiphase flowEnvironmental scienceFlow (mathematics)Process engineeringComputer scienceEngineeringMechanical engineeringMechanicsChemistryPhysics

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Now thankful for the continuing recovery from the health and business effects of COVID-19, I sincerely hope that all JPT readers continue to remain safe, healthy, and busy. Nevertheless, flow assurance effects from slugging and various types of solids deposition during engineering, design, maintenance, and operations still create challenging technical issues needing safe, economical solutions. The recurring long-term mitigation of multiple slugging and flow assurance phenomena such as the deposition of wax, erosion, asphaltenes, corrosion, and salt, still demands attention and considerable technical effort. Hydrodynamic slugging (or two-phase liquid/gas flow instability) in pipelines has caused flow capacity loss and intense vibration at the separator. Paper IPTC 22235 describes how this issue can be resolved using foams generated from surfactants introduced into the pipeline to entrap and slow down gas flow. The foam’s behavior was simulated using conventional OLGA (short for “oil and gas”) simulation software. This study showed that foams were able to slow gas velocity sufficiently and reduced liquid fluctuations, thus reducing slugging in a Malaysian pipeline. Accurate foam-viscosity measurements generated from the laboratory are a vital input to the model to understand the behavior of foam and quantify its effect before actual field applications. In the absence of flow loops to simulate slugging in pipelines and to validate the foam’s behavior, the use of the OLGA software still provides the necessary confidence in the application of foams to save time and reduce laborious and complex experimentations. The work described in paper SPE 209475 focuses on detailed investigation of magnesian calcite as the main deposition constituent of solids fouling several onshore and offshore operations of a major operator in the North Sea and Caspian regions. These solids can and do occur as a conventional scale that has perhaps hidden the extent of their prevalence in offshore and onshore operations involving fouling of tubing and restricting production, impeding operation of subsurface safety valves, reducing the efficiency of heaters and coolers offshore, and plugging strainers in the produced-water handling systems offshore. This paper describes how this “pseudoscale” was detected and its prevalence, using field case examples from several operated and nonoperated assets. It describes the theories developed to rationalize magnesian calcite deposition onto production surfaces. The paper then shares dispersant chemical field-trial-performance data and the deployment of electromagnetic fields to determine the effect of changing the zeta potential on the attraction of fine magnesian calcite particles to the surface and, thus, the effect on the fouling rate. Paper OTC 32059 describes an alternative to constant chemical injection or thermodynamic controls such as insulation or heating: the incorporation of a robust omniphobic surface treatment material that has been shown to significantly reduce the adhesion of flow assurance solids, resulting in lower risk for deposition and plugging by gas hydrates, waxes, and asphaltenes. As part of a US Department of Energy study, laboratory-scale tests were performed on a variety of apparatuses. While the results from these tests are promising, some disconnects between the laboratory-scale observations and field-scale testing still exist. The papers highlighted here for suggested additional reading focus on three areas requiring further new analytical tools while providing safe, cost-effective, and reliable operations for flow assurance. These papers present potential novel applications of nanomaterials for flow-restriction detection, slug modeling in flowline bends, and liquid-slugging detection using pressure monitoring. I hope you find them interesting, informative, and technically helpful and appreciate this opportunity to disseminate these technology options to you in this Technology Focus. In addition, I invite you to participate in the Flow Assurance Technical Section to augment more learning on other topics. Finally, I wish the full and complete recovery of your family, work, and SPE activities during these challenging times during the recovery of oil and gas. I have very much enjoyed providing you the latest developments in flow assurance over the past few years and wish you all the best. Recommended additional reading at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org SPE 208233 Slug-Frequency-Prediction Model for Fluid Flow in Flowline Bends by Loveday Igbokwe, Memorial University of Newfoundland, et al. IPTC 22459 Pressure Characteristics of Slug Flow in Horizontal Pipes by Ala AL-Dogail, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, et al. OTC 31804 Use of Nanomaterials for Early Detection of Flow-Restricting Substances by Stephen George Louis, Albastron Technologies, et al. SPE 209306 Visualization of Liquid Slugging Using Detailed, High-Quality Pressure Monitoring by Ryan David Gordon, Toku Systems, et al.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesMeta-epidemiology (narrow)
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Not applicable · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.806
Threshold uncertainty score1.000

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.000
Bibliometrics0.0030.002
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0010.000
Research integrity0.0000.002
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.004
GPT teacher head0.186
Teacher spread0.183 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.

Study designNot applicable
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

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Citations0
Published2022
Admission routes1
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