Tese: Displacement flow of compressible non-Newtonian fluids in annular geometries for well cementing applications.
Aluno(a) : Rafael Peralta Muniz MoreiraOrientador(a): Mônica Feijó Naccache
Área de Concentração: Petróleo e Energia
Data: 20/10/2023
Link para tese/dissertação: https://doi.org/10.17771/PUCRio.acad.65821
Resumo: This master dissertation investigates multiphase displacement flow in annular geometries involved in well cementing operations with foamed cement slurries and spacers. Well cementing plays a relevant role in well integrity and some applications require combining a low-density cement slurry with high compressive strength, and foamed cement suits this purpose. To properly model the displacement complexity involving foamed fluids flow - pressure and temperature dependent densities and non-Newtonian rheology - a 3-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model was developed from the open-source OpenFOAM toolbox. The mass, momentum and phase conservation equations are solved in an annular geometry, taking the effect of pressure in the fluid density and rheology, and the volume-of-fluid (VoF) method was used to capture the interface between the fluids. The models were validated using exact solutions for axisymmetric single-phase flow with incompressible and compressible fluids, and Newtonian and non-Newtonian constitutive models. Further, multiphase simulations were performed to estimate the removal efficiency of the drilling fluid by the foamed cement slurry/spacer in different conditions – density and viscosity contrast, eccentricities, and flow rate - and with different correlations for the foamed cement rheological behavior. Finally, the displacement simulations with constant density and rheology displacing fluids (unfoamed) were performed and used to compare the results with the foamed displacing fluids. The results indicate that the displacement efficiency with a foamed cement technique outperforms constant density lightweight cement slurries with similar conditions and are much less sensitive to impairment when challenging conditions are present.