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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
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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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
influence of gas presence and viscous fluid on ESPs
performance. 1. Lea, J. F., Bearden J. L., 1980, “Effects of Gaseous
The speed affects the gas void fraction where the Fluids on Submersible Pump Performance,” SPE 9218.
surging point will occur. The increase of the rotation 2. Turpin, J., Lea, J., e Bearden, J., 1986, “Gas-Liquid
causes the surging point occurrence for higher gas through Centrifugal Pumps-Correlation of Data”.
fractions, providing greater ability to operate the pump in Proceeding of the Third International Pump Symposium,
the presence of gas. This is due to flow turbulence 13-20.
increase, what impedes the coalescence of bubbles. 3. Estevam, V. França, F. A.; Alhanati, F. S. J.;
In viscous tests, an intense deterioration on pump "Centrifugal Pumping of Gas-Liquid Mixtures: a
performance has been observed, due to viscous losses
8 SPE 165072