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Department of Mechanical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, 300, Cheoncheon-dong, Jangan-gu, Suwon, 440-746, Republic of Korea
Korea Institute of Construction and Technology, 1199, Simondae-ro, Ilsanseo-gu, Goyang, 411-712, Republic of Korea
Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources, 30, Gajeong-dong, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, 305-350, Republic of Korea
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history:
Received 13 April 2009
Accepted 3 December 2009
Keywords:
Slim hole drilling
Drilling uids
Helical ow
Inclined annulus
Rotating cylinder
a b s t r a c t
We examine solidliquid mixture upward hydraulic transport of solid particles in vertical and inclined annuli
with a rotating inner cylinder. Lift forces acting on uidized particles play a central role in many important
applications such as the removal of drill cuttings in horizontal drill holes, sand transport in fractured
reservoirs, and sediment transport. Annular uid velocities in our study varied from 0.4 m/s to 1.2 m/s. The
effect of annulus inclination and drill pipe rotation on the carrying capacity of drilling uid, particle rising
velocity, and pressure drop in a slim hole annulus were measured for fully developed ows of water, and for
aqueous solutions of sodium carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) and bentonite. For higher particle feed
concentrations, the hydraulic pressure drop of the mixture ow increased due to friction between the wall
and solids, or among solids. Comparing our numerical and experimental results allowed the assessment and
further development of existing two-phase numerical models and grid constructions.
2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Among the various industrial operations involved with multiphase
systems, agitation of solidliquid systems is quite common. Examples
include catalytic reactions, oil well drilling, sand transport in fractured
reservoirs, etc. Although there are many industrial applications of
solidliquid mixture ows in technology, the available knowledge
about particle ows is incomplete due to difculties encountered in
analyzing these complex systems.
Due to the variety of parameters related to solidliquid mixture
ow, many conditions must be included when considering the
inuence of variables related to the transportation of drill cuttings.
The study of transportation drill cuttings is an engineering problem
that is classied as multiphase ow involving solid particles, liquids,
and gasses. The study of drill cuttings transportation ability can be
divided into the dynamics of the particles within the uid, and the
action of drilling irrigation. When an oil well is drilled, it is necessary
to transport the cuttings up to the surface. To this end, drilling uid is
pumped through the center of the drill pipe and back up to the surface
through the annular gap between the drill pipe and the drilled hole.
The ow up to the annulus can be laminar or turbulent depending on
the situation.
With the increase in the use of deviated, highly deviated, and long
reach drilling, greater consideration must be given to the uid
mechanics of transportation in situations where none, or only a small
Corresponding author. Tel.: + 82 42 868 3092; fax: + 82 42 868 3220.
E-mail address: kyjp7272@kigam.re.kr (Y.-J. Kim).
0920-4105/$ see front matter 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.petrol.2009.12.002
S.-M. Han et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 70 (2010) 308319
Nomenclature
Dh
dp/dz
e
m
N
P
R1
R2
Re
vz
z
CVT
Greek Symbols
309
= k
a = k
310
S.-M. Han et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 70 (2010) 308319
Fig. 4. Variation of particle rise velocity with rotational speed and ow rate at (a) 0, (b) 20, (c) 40 and (d) 60 in water.
S.-M. Han et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 70 (2010) 308319
cylinder. The outer cylinder was made of transparent acryl pipe. The
ow eld was captured by an XC-55 CCD camera with 640 480 pixels at 8 bit resolution. The shutter speed was 1/1000 s. The travel
length of the particle was measured in a BMP-type photograph
captured by the CCD camera. The velocity of the particle was obtained
by dividing by time (30 frames/s). The experiment was repeated ten
times for the same experimental conditions, and the particle rise
velocity was averaged.
Static pressure was measured using a static pressure tap with a
0.5 mm diameter, distributed longitudinally in the outer cylinder. Two
static pressure taps were installed along the ow direction in the
measuring section. The static pressures were read from a calibrated
manometer bank with 1 mm resolution. The specic gravity of the
manometer uid (CCl4) was 1.88, and it gave a height in the range of
20 600 mm.
A short horizontal sampling line with a ball valve was constructed
at the exit of the test section to measure volumetric particle
concentration. In each experimental run, a sample uid mixture of
approximately 500 cm3 was collected from this sampling port without
diverting the whole ow through the annulus. This procedure was
repeated at least ve times for the same experimental conditions, and
the measured data were averaged.
First, experiments with water were performed to determine the
accuracy of the experimental set-up. Later, experiments with the
solidliquid mixtures were performed in a similar manner.
The head tank was lled with water up to a marked level, and the
pump was started. Particles at the desired feed particle concentration
311
q q + q q vq = m
pq
t
p=1
Fig. 5. Variation of particle rise velocity with rotational speed and ow rate at (a) 0, (b) 20, (c) 40 and (d) 60 in 0.4% CMC solution.
312
S.-M. Han et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 70 (2010) 308319
+
4
v + q q vq vq = q p +
q
q qg
t q q q
+ q q F q + F lift;q + F vm;q
+ Kpq vp vq + m pq vpq
+
v + s s vs vs = s pps +
s
s s g 5
t s s s
+ s s F s + F lift;s + F vm;s
+ Kls vl vs + m ls vls
friction was also assumed for interactions between the walls and the
particles.
No-slip boundary conditions were imposed on all the solid surfaces
for the continuous phase. The same conditions were also applied to the
discrete phase and imposed on the corresponding momentum
equations. The inlet liquid velocity and the outlet pressure were
specied. No-slip boundary conditions were assumed at the walls for
the liquid phase. Interactions between the particles and the walls were
modeled with the same formulation used for solids pressure and
granular viscosity for the particleparticle interactions.
Fig. 6. Variation of particle volume concentration with annulus inclination and ow rate at (a) 0 rpm, (b) 200 rpm, (c) 400 rpm and (d) 600 rpm in water.
S.-M. Han et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 70 (2010) 308319
313
Fig. 7. Variation of particle volume concentration with annulus inclination and ow rate at (a) 0 rpm, (b) 200 rpm, (c) 400 rpm and (d) 600 rpm in 0.4% CMC solution.
314
S.-M. Han et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 70 (2010) 308319
Fig. 8. Variation of particle volume concentration with annulus inclination and ow rate at (a) 0 rpm, (b) 200 rpm, (c) 400 rpm and (d) 600 rpm in 5% bentonite solution.
S.-M. Han et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 70 (2010) 308319
315
liquid mixture ow increased due to the friction between the wall and
solids, or among solids.
It is difcult to compare directly the pressure drop among the
three uids because the mixture uid velocity of water is greater than
the other uids. However, the pressure drop of the solidliquid
mixture ow increased with the increase in viscosity of the carrier
uid. The inclination of the annulus affected the magnitude of the
Fig. 9. Variation of pressure drop with annulus inclination in added sand (4%):
(a) water, (b) 0.4% CMC solution, (c) 5% bentonite solution at 0 rpm.
Fig. 10. Variation of pressure drop with rotational speed and solid concentration in
(a) water, (b) 0.4% CMC solution, and (c) 5% bentonite solution. (Inclination = 0).
316
S.-M. Han et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 70 (2010) 308319
Fig. 11. Comparison of pressure loss with sand concentration at 0 rpm: (a) water,
(b) 0.4% CMC solution.
Fig. 12. Comparison of pressure loss in water and 0.4% CMC solution as a function of
ow rate.
S.-M. Han et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 70 (2010) 308319
317
Fig. 13. Contour of solid volume fraction in inclined annulus (0.4% CMC solution velocity = 0.5 m/s, sand 8%).
0.7, as shown in Fig. 16. The calculated axial pressure drop ratio is
plotted versus eccentricity for inner cylinder rotation speed. The ratio
of the axial pressure drop to the axial pressure drop was obtained
when the inner cylinder was stationary. A pattern in the results is
clearly visible: for small excursions from a concentric annulus, shearthinning effects have ample opportunity to dominate inertial effects.
Thus, the axial pressure drop falls with increased eccentricity.
5. Conclusions
In this study, steady laminar and turbulent upward ows of solid
liquid mixtures through concentric and eccentric annuli were experimentally and numerically investigated.
Numerical calculations were run for 0.4% CMC solution as carrier uid
and the calculation results showed a good agreement with experimental
data for the pressure drop, but numerical results are slightly lower than
experimental values.
Our numerical calculations predicted that almost all sand particles
settle down to the lower part of the annulus, and some particles are
suspended in the upper part of the annulus. As the hole inclination
increases from the vertical, the volume fraction of sand is increased.
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S.-M. Han et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 70 (2010) 308319
Fig. 15. Contour of volume fraction of solid particle for Re = 1050 in vertical annulus.
(0.4% CMC solution, sand 8%): (a) = 0, (b) = 0.1, (c) = 0.2.
Fig. 14. Volume fraction of sand in 0.4% CMC solution with inclination: (a) 30, (b) 45,
(c) 60 at vz = 0.43 m/s and Ri = 22 mm.
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by the Brain Korea 21 Project in 2008, Faculty
Research Fund, Sungkyunkwan University, 2008 and Development of
S.-M. Han et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 70 (2010) 308319
319
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Fig. 16. Flow of solidliquid uid in eccentric annuli with inner cylinder rotation:
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