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SPE 165072

Gas and Viscous Effects on the ESPs Performance


W. Monte Verde, State University of Campinas; J. Biazussi, A. Bannwart, State University of Campinas; N.
Arrifano Sassim, CEPETRO; V. Estevam, PETROBRAS

Copyright 2013, Society of Petroleum Engineers

This paper was prepared for presentation at the SPE Artificial Lift Conference-Americas held in Cartagena, Colombia, 21-22 May 2013.

This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE program committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents of th e paper have not been
reviewed by the Society of Petroleum Engineers and are subject to correction by the author(s). The material does not necessar ily reflect any position of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, its
officers, or members. Electronic reproduction, distribution, or storage of any part of this paper without the written consent of the Society of Petroleum Engineers is prohi bited. Permission to
reproduce in print is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words; illustrations may not be copied. The abstract must contain conspicuous acknowledgment of SPE copyright.

Abstract flow causes instabilities in the pressure gain curve versus


This paper aims at presenting the experimental ESP the flow rate. The curve starts to present a maximum
performance curves (head, brake horsepower and point called “surging point”. Under these operational
efficiency) when operating with gas-liquid mixtures and conditions, the discharge pressure has oscillatory
viscous fluids. characteristics, as illustrated in Fig. 1. In flow rates under
In order to investigate the ESP performance operating this point, a high drop in pressure gain occurs. After the
with gas-liquid, a three-stage ESP with some surging point, an increasing in gas fraction may block the
modifications in its casing was used so that we could area impeller, making flow rate nule, a well-known
visualize the flow inside the pump. This pump was tested phenomenon called “gas locking”.
with gas void fraction varying between 0% and 10%,
different liquid flow rate and speed.
Pump tests operating with viscous fluid were
conducted in a radial three-stage ESP with viscosity
ranging from 1 to 820 cP and different speeds.
Data has shown that it is possible to verify the
performance degradation of ESP operating under
unfavorable conditions, contributing, therefore, to a better
physical understanding of the phenomena involved.

Introduction
Artificial lifting methods are essential in petroleum Fig. 1 – Discharge pressure signal at the surging point.
industry, and have been used to start or improve well
production, whose reservoir energy is insufficient to lift The ESP is widely used in the oil industry for heavy
oil up to production facilities. The electrical submersible oil production on offshore fields. In this scenario, the
pump (ESP) is one the artificial lifting methods used in oil facilities and operations are complex and costly, and there
production. This method consists on the use of a multi- is a need to produce with high flow rate to reward the
stage centrifugal pump, which is generally installed at the high investments and the low prices for the heavy oil. An
bottom of the tubing, inside the wellbore. The ESP is adequate design of a pumping system is essential to
characterized by its high flow rate production and great provide production reliability and prevent interventions in
efficiency. Nevertheless, in a high gas fraction and/or in a the wells. The ESPs are selected using water performance
high viscosity oil scenario(s), ESPs have their curves. For operations with viscous oil, the performance
performance impaired, what may result in a decreasing of changes in comparison to ESPs performance with water,
its production or even its stop. due to increased losses. Therefore, correction factors are
Due to oil reservoir depletion, the pressure may occur introduced for the ESP selection. However, the correction
under the bubble point (saturation pressure). At these factors that are available in the literature were developed
pressure levels, the produced fluid is a two phase gas- for conventional volute type pump, which generally have
liquid mixture. For high liquid flow rates and low gas large diameters and few stages, differentiating from the
fractions, pump performance is little affected. However, a multi-stage pumps used in oil production.
severe deterioration in its performance has been observed This paper aims at presenting an experimental study
in high gas fraction scenario. The presence of free gas in on ESPs operating separately with gas and viscous fluid.
2 SPE 165072

A study carried out under real operational conditions its motor, the booster’s main function is to control
would involve a viscous liquid-gas flow. Although, there pressure at the ESP intake. The liquid mass flow is
is great difficulty in the separation among gas and high obtained by a Coriolis flowmeter located at the suction
viscous fluids, making ESP tests restrictive in closed loop. line of the ESP. The air injection is made through nozzles
installed in the ESP’s suction, once the air flow is
Gas effects on ESPs perfomance measured by a laminar flow element. After being pumped
Due to the use of ESP operating with liquid-gas flow by the ESP, the two-phase air-water mixture returns to the
in oil production, there is great interest in studying tanks where the gravitational separation of the phases is
pump`s performance and operating them out of the done. Pressure, temperature, viscosity, torque on the drive
surging point, where damages caused by free gas presence shaft of the ESP, flow rate and voltage on the electric
are minor. Therefore, the acknowledgments of operational motor are also measured in the test. The variables
conditions and factors that may cause instabilities on measured in the test are conditioned by voltage (0-10V)
pump performance are very important for the field or current (4-20mA) modules. A supervisory system
application. dedicated to loop processes and presents this operational
Because of the complexity of two-phase liquid-gas data and performance results through a friendly interface.
flow, the majority of research carried out by petroleum
industry is empirical. The various studies carried out until
now have been essential for the understanding of the
performance and running of the ESP working with two-
phase flow. However, the mechanical models (found on
references) used to identify the “surging” phenomena run
in different ways among each other, what may encourage
new studies in this area.
Lea & Bearden [1] carried out the first experimental
study, in petroleum industry, about pumps operating in
gas presence. The authors obtained a great amount of
experimental data in order to understand ESP’s
performance operating with liquid-gas flow. Based on Lea
& Bearden’s experimental data, Tupin et al [2] developed
an empirical correlation to predict the head as a function
of gas-liquid ratio at the pump suction. This correlation is Fig. 2 – ESP bench test, located at State University of
still widely used in industry. Campinas, São Paulo/Brazil.
Estevam [3] has developed one of the first ESP’s
prototypes allowing visualization of the flow within the In this study, a three-stage modified ESP was used.
impeller. Based on the experimental observations, the The pump modifications consist in replacing its metal
author could delineate the occurrence of the surging point, casing by another one made of acrylic, what allowed the
defining a dimensionless called Surging Indicator. The visualization of the flow inside the pump. This mixed-
application of the surging indicator states the kind of flow flow pump, model GN-7000 (Reda-Schlumberger),
pattern that occurs in the impeller channels: dispersed provides at the BEP a head of 9 m (per stage) and
bubbles in or around the impeller channel; or stratified flowrate of 46 m3/h operating at 3500 rpm. The adoption
with remixing region formed by dispersed bubbles. The of this model is justified by its widespread use in the oil
occurrence of surging is related to the stratification of the industry and also because of drive power limitations of
flow within the impeller. circuit tests. In ESPs’s performance tests, operating with
Other researchers like Gamboa & Prado [4], Sachdeva two-phase liquid-gas flow, the mixture water-air was used
[5], Trevisan [6], Barrios [7] and Duran & Prado [8] have as working fluid.
also carried out studies on ESP’s performance operating Even though, from the operational standpoint, the
in the presence of a compressible phase. experimental procedure developed was very laborious, it
aims to facilitate the analysis of experimental results.
Test procedures Tests are performed with a constant homogeneous gas
Aiming to investigate the ESP’s performance void fraction ( ),
operating with two-phase gas-liquid flow, an
experimental test loop was assembled. The experimental
facilities were assembled at LABPETRO, a laboratory
from the “Petroleum Studies Center” (Cepetro-
UNICAMP). where, is the volumetric gas flow rate and e is the
The ESP’s test loop is schematically illustrated in Fig. total volumetric flow of mixture, both measured under the
2. This circuit consists of a conventional ESP driven by a conditions of pressure and temperature of the ESP
three phase induction motor 380 V, 50 hp, controlled by a suction.
frequency inverter. A booster pumps water from the By analogy to the two-phase flow in pipes, the
reservoirs to the test line. By controlling the frequency of homogeneous volumetric void fraction is associated with
SPE 165072 3

the condition of no-slip between phases; in other words,


when the local speed of the phases are equal. In general,
this condition is valid for the flow of little dispersed
bubbles loaded with a continuum liquid phase that,
commonly, occurs in flow with high liquid flow rates.
Another operational parameter that is controlled during
the tests is the ESP suction pressure, which is kept
constant throughout the performance curve.
Thus, for a certain speed of the pump , a constant
pressure in suction is kept and we vary the flow of
liquid and gas such so that the gas void fraction remains
constant. The pressure suction is kept constant by varying
the booster’s speed.
Despising the variation of kinetic and potential energy
of the fluid through the pump, pump efficiency (η) is Fig. 3 – Pressure Increment, 2400 rpm (pump GN 7000,
obtained by the ratio between hydraulic power and and =0 to 10%).
brake horsepower (BHP), which are defined by:

where is the total volumetric flow, is


the difference between the pump’s intake and discharge
pressure, is the speed of the pump and
is the torque in the pump shaft.

Results
From the experimental procedure already described,
the performance curves were obtained, as shown in Fig. 3
to 5. The results were obtained for the water-air mixture
with gas void fraction ranging from 0 to 10%, the intake Fig. 4 – Brake horsepower, 2400 rpm (pump GN 7000,
gauge pressure is 50 kPa and speed of 2400 rpm. Results and =0 to 10%).
are presented according to normalizations in order to ease
interpretation. The normalization is done as shown from
Eq. (3) to (6). The reference values for normalization are
the maximum results obtained for the single-phase tests
for the rotation work.

Fig. 5 – Efficiency, 2400 rpm (pump GN 7000,


and =0 to 10%).

where is the maximum differential pressure These normalized variables are presented in relation to
generated by operating only with water pump at a certain the number of stages of each device, representing, in this
speed; is the maximum liquid flow rate (open flow sense, a middle stage where each stage would have the
point); is the maximum brake horsepower same performance. For ESP multistage pumps operating
consumed by the pump operating under water and is only with liquid, the performance of each stage is quite
the maximum operational efficiency at a certain rotation similar to the others, however, when the pump operates in
speed. gas presence, each stage presents a different performance
from each other [9]. Therefore, although the results are
4 SPE 165072

presented per stage, the number of stages has influence on


the performance of the devices.
As shown in Fig. 3, besides deteriorating the pump
performance, the gas void fraction increasing causes
instabilities in curve performance. The maximum point of
these curves represents the surging phenomena. It has
been observed that the surging phenomena occur even in
low void fractions, when flow rate and speed are
sufficiently low. Under these conditions, the bubbles tend
to coalescence and form gas pockets, what causes a partial
blocking on the impeller (Estevam, 2002).
Performance deterioration is quite accentuated due to
gas presence. For a flow rate of 0.4, it has been observed
that the capacity to generate pump pressure is reduced
from approximately 0.8 to 0.4, in gas void fractions of 4 Fig. 6 – Pressure increment at the surging (pump GN
and 10%, respectively. Therefore, a 50% reduction in 7000, and =1200, 1800 and 2400 rpm).
pumping capacity occurs, due to a 6% increasing in gas
void fraction.
Tests allowed us to work with a gas fraction of only
10%, while, in industry applications, it is possible to
operate with ESPs with gas fractions greater then 30%,
though with much higher intake pressure. The low suction
pressure used in this study, in a certain gas void fraction,
causes a much higher increasing in bubbles’ diameter than
in high pressure. On the other hand, it is also possible that
the horizontal orientation of the pump is enabling the
accumulation of bubbles at its top and anticipating the
occurrence of surging.
As seen in Fig. 4 and 5, in general, the brake
horsepower consumed by the pump decreases due to the
increase in gas void fraction. The efficiency of the pump
follows the same tendency: the higher the gas fraction is,
the lower its efficiency is. The presence of gas impairs the Fig. 7 – Flow rate at the surging (pump GN 7000,
process of energy transfer from the impeller to the fluid and =1200, 1800 and 2400 rpm).
because all interactions have dynamic origin and the
density reduces the kinetics energy transferred to the The speed increase intensifies the centrifugal field
mixture. inside the pump, increasing the phase segregation
tendency inside the impeller’s channel. However,
Speed Effects according to the results, the speed increase is beneficial
Trying to evaluate the effect on the ESP rotation in its for the running of the pump. The higher speed increases
performance, tests were conducted in three speeds: 1200, also the flowrate and, consequently, the turbulence. The
1800 and 2400 rpm. turbulence contributed to decrease the diameter of the
Fig.6 shows the pressure differential across the pump bubble, impairing the phase’s segregation. Therefore, the
at the surging point for different speeds and gas void effect of turbulence is apparently predominant in relation
fractions ranging from 4 to 10%. These results show the to the effect of the centrifugal field increase.
increasing in differential pressure generated at the surging Figs 8 and 9 show the curves of GN 7000
point, as the speed is increased. performance operating at different speeds for gas void
Fig. 7 shows the flow rate at the surging point as a fractions of 6 and 10%, respectively. By analyzing the
function of the gas void fraction. The rotation increase results of both graphs, it is evident the effect of speed on
makes this phenomenon occur at lower flowrate, the pump performance. Besides the changes in curves’
increasing the pump tolerance to the presence of gas. This shapes, there is also a significant improvement in the
figure serves as an operating stability map of the pump. performance of the pump due to rotational speed increase.
To a certain operation flow rate, the void fraction at
which the surging point will occur is known. In lower
fractions than the surging point’s, pump operation is
stable. For higher fractions, the operation is instable.
SPE 165072 5

industry is proposed by the Hydraulic Institute, described


in ANSI-HI 9.6.7-2010 [11]. This correction procedure is
based on a large amount of experimental data and
provides performance pump operating with viscous fluid
based on the performance curves with water.
The correction of the pump performance operating
with viscous fluid is accomplished by determining the
correction factors given by Eq. 7 to 9.

Fig. 8 – Effect of speed at =6% (pump GN 7000,


and =1200, 1800 and 2400 rpm).

where , e are head, flow rate and efficiency


for a viscous fluid; , e are head, flow rate and
efficiency for water; , e are the correction factors
for head, flow rate and efficiency.
These correction factors are obtained from the fit of
experimental data of various pumps. The database was
obtained using single and multi-stage pumps, covering the
following ranges of parameters: closed and semi-open
impellers; kinematic viscosity 1 to 3000 cSt; BEP flow
rate at 3 to 410 m3/h, head per stage 6 to 130 m.
Applying this correction procedure is restricted to
radial impellers with specific speed , with the
units described in the HI standard.
Fig.9 - Effect of speed at =10% (pump GN 7000,
and =1200, 1800 and 2400 rpm). Test procedures
The experimental facilities used for viscous tests are
Viscous effects on ESPs perfomance the same shown in Fig.2. In order to investigate the
The ESPs performance curves are obtained influence on ESP performance the glycerol was used as
experimentally using water as a working fluid. Therefore, working fluid. Glycerol was chosen due to its high
the design of ESP units based on these curves is suitable viscosity variation with temperature. Therefore, by
for operations with water or light oil production. knowing its rheological curve, it is possible to change the
Nevertheless, ESPs units are often used to produce viscosity of the fluid by controlling the temperature.
heavy oils or emulsions with high viscosities. Liquids Temperature control is accomplished using a Chiller that
with viscosity much larger than the water cause the is able to heat or cool the working fluid.
increase of viscous losses within the centrifugal pump In these tests, a commercial ESP was used, model P-
stages, resulting in a performance decrease. 47 (Baker Hughes) with three stages, which provides a
Thus, the performance curves obtained from tests head of 15.2 m (per stage) and flow rate of 32.8 m3/h
done with water can be used, with the necessary operates at 3500 rpm.
precision, for operations with low viscous fluids. If the The experimental procedure consists of (from the
viscous effects are not considered in sizing the ESP units, point of open-flow) restricting flow rate up to the shut-off
an overload on the electrical motor and a low expected point, and keeping the temperature constant throughout
production can occur. the test. During the tests all the variables needed to
Another difficulty arises when heavy oils are produced determine the ESP performance are measured.
with a high water cut, where the viscosity of the mixture
can be much higher than the viscosity of the oil. Results
Moreover, these emulsions may behave as non- Fig. 10 shows the performance of the ESP P-47
Newtonian fluid and the accuracy of pump performance operating at 2400 rpm and a viscosity ranging from 1 cP
becomes extremely complex [10]. to 820 cP. Figs 11 and 12 show the brake horsepower and
There are several researchers who propose models to efficiency, respectively.
estimate the performance of the pump operating with With viscosity increase, friction losses are also
viscous fluids. The model that is most widely used in the increased, so that the pump performance deviates from its
6 SPE 165072

performance running with water. The BEP flow rate and Fig. 13 shows the comparison between the correction
head decrease and the maximum efficiency shifts to the factors of head obtained experimentally and the one given
left due to viscosity increase. The brakehorse power has by the Hydraulic Institute method. It has been observed a
an accentuated increase due to the viscosity increase. The great agreement between this study and the HI method,
maximum flow rate produced by the pump also decreases having the maximum deviation observed of 8%.
in response to the viscous dissipation increase. The
maximum head does not change with viscosity variation.

Fig.13 – Correction Factors of head, Comparison of


Hydraulic Institute method with actual test (pump P-47,
Fig.10 - Head (pump P-47, = 2400rpm and various = 2400rpm).
viscosities).
A comparison between the correction factor of flow
rate obtained experimentally and the one given by the
Hydraulic Institute method is shown in Fig. 14. There is a
discrepancy between the results which vary between 20
and 45%. The correction factors given by HI are higher
than those measured experimentally. This shows that,
based on the method of HI, the BEP flow rates would be
higher than the measures in this experiment.

Fig.11 – Brake horsepower (pump P-47, = 2400rpm


and various viscosities).

Fig.14 – Correction Factors of flow rate, Comparison of


Hydraulic Institute method with actual test (pump P-47,
= 2400rpm).

Fig. 15 shows the comparison between the correction


factor of efficiency obtained experimentally and the one
given by the Hydraulic Institute method. It has been
observed a deviation between 25 and 42% between these
results. The correction factors given by HI are higher than
Fig.12 – Efficiency (pump P-47, = 2400rpm and those measured experimentally, indicating greater
various viscosities). efficiency.
SPE 165072 7

increase. With the diminishing of its efficiency, there is a


reduction in flow rate and head at the BEP.
By comparing the experimental results with the
correction method of the Hydraulic Institute,
concordances have been observed regarding the
correction factor of head, with the maximum deviation of
around 8%. However, the correction factors for flow rate
and efficiency presented a high discrepancy, reaching
45% for the correction factor of the flowrate. Therefore,
for the P-47 pump studied in this work, the HI method
used for performance correction would result in an
undersizing of the flow rate and drive power.

Acknowledgements
Fig.15 – Correction Factors of efficiency, Comparison of The authors would like to thank Petrobras for financial
Hydraulic Institute method with actual test (pump P-47, support.
= 2400rpm).
Nomenclature
In Fig. 16 the effect of speed on the efficiency
correction factor is shown. Data has shown that the Symbol Description Unit (SI)
correction factors increases with rotation increase. Higher
correction efficiency factors means that pump Gas flow rate
performance tends to approximate to the performance of Total flow rate
operation done with water, contributing to a decrease in Normalized total flow rate [-]
viscous losses. The decrease in viscous losses due to Pressure increment
speed increase is explained by examining the Reynolds Intake pressure
number. For higher speed, the flow rate increases, Discharge pressure
increasing the Reynolds number and decreasing the Normalized pressure increment [-]
friction factor. Brake horsepower
Normalizes brake horsepower [-]
Hydraulic Power
Shaft torque
Efficiency [-]
Normalized Efficiency [-]
Homogeneous gas void fraction [-]
Angular speed
Correction factor for head [-]
Correction factor for flow rate [-]
Correction factor for efficiency [-]
Viscous fluid head
Water head
Viscous fluid flow rate
Water flow rate
Viscous fluid efficiency [-]
Fig.16 – Effect of speed on efficiency correction factors Water efficiency [-]
(pump P-47, = 2400 to 3500 rpm). Specific speed

Conclusions
The purpose of this paper was to investigate the References
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causes the surging point occurrence for higher gas through Centrifugal Pumps-Correlation of Data”.
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increase, what impedes the coalescence of bubbles. 3. Estevam, V. França, F. A.; Alhanati, F. S. J.;
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performance has been observed, due to viscous losses
8 SPE 165072

Mechanistic Approach”, Rio Oil & Gas Conference, 4-7


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7. Barrios, L. J., 2007, “Visualization and Modeling of
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8. Duran, J., Prado, M., 2003. “ESP Stages Air-water
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Electrical Submersible Pump”, SPE 71552, Annual
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