Home – Home – Jornals – Russian Geology and Geophysics 2018 number Неопубликованное

This article is devoted to the development and experimental validation of an active thermometry method for quantitatively assessing fluid flow rate in horizontal wells. Two approaches were studied experimentally using a physical well model under single-phase flow conditions: a calorimetric approach (based on the integral superheating of a homogenized flow) and a convective approach based on the dependence of the heated pipe wall temperature on the flow rate. It was established that the Richardson number (Ri) is a key criterion determining the heat transfer mechanism. At Ri > 1 (low flow rate regime), thermogravitational effects dominate, causing significant temperature stratification of the flow. It is shown that under such conditions, the calorimetric method is more reliable and allows for flow rate determination with high accuracy (deviation no more than 10%). At the same time, the limitations of the convective method, the interpretation of which in this study took into account only the forced component of heat transfer (the Dittus-Belter model), are identified: it is correct only for Ri < 0.1 (high flow rates). The work lays the methodological basis for further development of the method, the key areas of which are the complication of the convective model to take into account free (natural) convection and the adaptation of both approaches to the conditions of multiphase flows.