Proppant transport down a three-dimensional planar fracture
Hydraulic fracturing is a technique that is widely used in the petroleum industry to enhance production from low permeability oil and gas reservoirs. The design of a hydraulic fracturing treatment is, therefore, an important aspect in petroleum engineering. The first objective of this research was to develop two- and three-dimensional hydraulic fracturing and proppant transport models using approximate analytical solutions and more rigorous finite difference numerical solutions. The finite difference solutions were formulated to include the capability of using fluid properties as a function of time and temperature, multiple injection rates and multiple types of proppants. The second objective of this research was to validate these models, to make sensitivity analyses on fracture propagation for various reservoir and fluid constraints and to history match the injection rate and injection pressure data from several field examples to determine the shape and dimensions of actual fractures. Results are presented to illustrate how the model can be used to analyze field data. The contribution of this research to the petroleum industry is the development of computer models to simulate two- and three-dimensional hydraulic fracture propagation and proppant transport. The proppant transport model is a rigorous finite difference simulator that includes the effect of fluid viscosity, proppant density and proppant concentration on proppant transport. All models can be executed with minimum input data, can be run on either a mainframe or a PC computer, and require only moderate CPU time compared to other three-dimensional fracture propagation models.
- Research Organization:
- Texas A and M Univ., College Station, TX (USA)
- OSTI ID:
- 6796386
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: Thesis (Ph. D.)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
03 NATURAL GAS
HYDRAULIC FRACTURING
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
FLOW MODELS
NATURAL GAS WELLS
OIL WELLS
CRACK PROPAGATION
DATA ANALYSIS
DENSITY
FINITE DIFFERENCE METHOD
FLOW RATE
FLUID MECHANICS
FRACTURING FLUIDS
HYDRAULIC FRACTURES
INJECTION WELLS
NUMERICAL SOLUTION
PROPPING AGENTS
RESERVOIR FLUIDS
RESERVOIR PRESSURE
TEMPERATURE DEPENDENCE
THREE-DIMENSIONAL CALCULATIONS
TIME DEPENDENCE
TRANSPORT
TWO-DIMENSIONAL CALCULATIONS
VISCOSITY
WELL STIMULATION
COMMINUTION
FAILURES
FLUIDS
FRACTURES
FRACTURING
ITERATIVE METHODS
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
MECHANICS
PHYSICAL PROPERTIES
SIMULATION
STIMULATION
WELLS
020300* - Petroleum- Drilling & Production
030300 - Natural Gas- Drilling
Production
& Processing