Development of Contactless Sand Production Test Instrument

Background: Sand production is an important factor affecting reservoir exploitation. Excessive sand production affects the oil well life, causes the damage to the oil recovery device and brings serious hidden danger in the process of safety production. Objective: This paper presents a sand content computation model for the crude oil, which uses the power of sand production and Parseval theorem, develops a system to monitor the sand content. Method: The main problem of designing the mechanical structure and matching layer for sand sensor is introduced. Furthermore a contactless Doppler ultrasonic method is used to develop sand amount detection system‚ finally the system measurement accuracy is calibrated by the developed calibration system. The sand production computation model can describe the relationship between sand monitor output and sand amount; compute the oil sand carrying ratio. The sand sensor is installed on the outside of pipe, not directly contacted with the sand particles. Measurement accuracy of the sand production is higher than the same type instrument.