Modelling and Simulation of Liquid-Loaded Gas Flow

Liquid loading of gas wells gives rise to problems in the wells and diminishes their complete recuperation. A few authors proposed various models to predict the beginning of liquid loading in gas wells, yet the outcomes from the models regularly show disparities. Turner et al.'s basic model was developed based on the understanding that the liquid droplet is a sphere and stays spherical all through the whole wellbore. Thereafter, Li's model was formulated with the understanding that the fluid drops are flat in shape and stays the same all through. Furthermore, Maduabuchi's model was proposed in line with the previous models by presenting a distortion coefficient "C" to cater for the disfigurement of the liquid droplet along the wellbore and, thus, have the option to effectively foresee the basic rate when the droplet fluctuates from the circular shape to the level shape. In this work, another model has been developed and simulated with the aid of MATLAB program to anticipate liquid loading in gas wells. In the new model of this work, Maduabuchi et al.'s model was utilized while relating the drift flux equations and their parameters (distribution coefficient, C0, and the drift velocity, uD) in a modified form. The drift flux parameters were incorporated to cater for the impacts of mixing of the liquid and gas droplets. The newly developed Model predicted the critical velocity with a fitting accuracy of coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.9547 compared to other models. Maduabuchi et al.'s model has coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.8987, Li et al.'s Model has R2 value of 0.8987 and Turner et al.'s model has coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.8939. Consequently, the new evolved model was discovered to be a quick and robust tool for estimating exactly the beginning of liquid loading of producing gas wells.