Research Progress in the Mathematical Models on Mechanism of Cold Heavy Oil Production with Sand

摘要

Cold Heavy Oil Production with Sand (CHOPS) is an emerging technology. Field practice and laboratory experiment research show the main mechanism of CHOPS are stable foam oil flow producing the internal driving force and the mass sand inflow forming wormhole network leading to the permeability enhancement. In this paper, we summarize the mathematical models describing the mechanism of CHOPS: foam oil model, wormhole model and comprehensive model. The foam oil models mainly describe the formation, properties and flow of foam oil while the wormhole models describe the wormhole growth, the flow in wormhole and sand production predicting. Finally, we discuss the emphasis and directions of research in the future.