Liquid loading in producing gas wells is the inability of the produced gas to
remove produced liquids from the wellbore. A review of existing flow loops worldwide
revealed that specialized areas of research such as liquid loading in gas wells are still
lacking dedicated test facilities. This project presents the design of a new dedicated
facility to be located at the TowerLab at the Richardson building with adequate
operating conditions to reproduce the flow regimes encountered prior to and after the
onset of liquid loading in gas wells. The facility consists of a compressed air system,
pipelines for air and water, a pressure vessel containing glass beads, an injection
manifold, and flow control and monitoring devices.
Our results show that three compressors working in parallel is the most technical
and economic configuration for the TowerLab based on the overall costs provided by the
supplier, the footprint but most importantly the flexibility. The design of the pressure
vessel required a cylindrical body with top and bottom welded-flat head covers with
multiple openings to minimize its weight. The pipelines connecting major equipment
and injection manifold located at the pressure vessel were selected based on the
superficial velocities for air and water. These values also showed the need for
independent injection using two manifolds instead of commingling flow through a tee
joint. The use of digital pressure gauges with an accuracy of 0.05 to 25% and coriolis or
vortex meters to measure air flowrate is also suggested. For the water line, installation of
turbine meters results in the most economic approach.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2358 |
| Date | 15 May 2009 |
| Creators | Fernandez Alvarez, Juan Jose |
| Contributors | Falcone, Gioia, Teodoriu, Catalin |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Thesis, text |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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