Oil and Gas

Biography

Biography: Dominic Adaoiza Onimowo

Abstract

The influx of water and or gas into the wellbore is a problem which diminishes oil recovery, increases separation costs and drastically reduces well production life. The current solution to this problem is the use of an Autonomous Inflow Control Valve (AICV) developed through the EU FP7 project called REVIVAL. The valve works to prevent water and or gas breakthrough into the wellbore and only allow oil to flow into the wellbore by detecting viscosity differences amongst the fluids which create varied pressure drops used to control the valves opening or closing. The current research follows the same concept aims on optimisation and control of flow in the inflow control valve by considering various geometries and cases using computational fluid dynamics, CFD to discover more efficient ways to operate the valve. The cases selected are based on fluid flow, oil in particular through various conduits at various Reynolds numbers.  The cases are a straight pipe, a coil pipe, a swirl pipe, a slinky type coil and a coil with an internal coil. The results show that there is a significant increase in pressure drop with the new designs which means the opening and closing of the piston in the inflow control valve would be more efficient hence achieving better valve response. The results obtained from this investigation could be extended to other applications in fluid mixture separation.