Staged Risk-Based Approach for Assessing Erosion Resistance of SAGD Flow Control Devices

摘要

SAGD operators are actively installing Inflow Control Devices (ICDs) in their SAGD production wells to enable production at low or ‘negative’ subcool values in order to maximize drawdown, increase fluid production rates and optimize SAGD economics. Operating the wells under higher vapour conditions could expose the ICDs to high velocity steam carrying sand particles, causing erosion and liner failure. A staged approach has been developed for assessing the relative erosion risk of candidate ICDs, including a stage one qualitative assessment, followed by analytical erosion calculations and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling.