Effect of Heat Loss on Pressure Falloff Tests
Citation
Ashkan Jahanbani G., Tom A. Jelmert"Effect of Heat Loss on Pressure Falloff Tests", International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT), V39(1),28-36 September 2016. ISSN:2231-5381. www.ijettjournal.org. published by seventh sense research group
Abstract
Analysis of pressure falloff tests gives
initial estimates of swept volume, essential for the
evaluation of a thermal recovery process. The
analysis is conventionally based on a two-zone
composite reservoir model with highly contrasting
fluid mobilities where the swept zone is assumed to
behave as a closed reservoir for a short period
exhibiting pseudo steady state behavior. The upward
buckling of the pressure derivative curves at late
times in some cases could not be explained using the
conventional composite models. This issue and some
of the errors associated with the estimation of swept
volume may possibly be related to heat loss which
could have significant effects on the pressure
behavior and dominate the pseudo steady state flow.
A few models were suggested for the analysis of
falloff tests with significant heat loss, however they
are limited in application. Moreover, permeability
should be known in advance for further analysis. In
this paper, a modified method of analysis
considering heat loss is discussed which makes the
flow regime identification easier and removes some
of the practical limitations. Results of the analysis
show improvement over the estimates obtained by
other methods.
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Keywords
pressure falloff test, thermal methods,
composite reservoir, heat loss.