How to product heavy oil by heating sucker rod pump
Thermal methods are inevitable in heavy oil/bitumen recovery. Different types of “aqueous” methods such as cyclic steam and hot water injection, in-situ combustion, hot water and steam flooding, and steam assisted gravity drainage have been widely applied over decades. Currently, non-aqueous heating methods, generally named electromagnetic, are in consideration as an alternative to the aqueous methods, which may not be applicable due to technical and environmental limitations. This technique still requires further research and field scale pilot applications to prove their technical and economic viability.
In this paper, a critical discussion on the review of electromagnetic heating is presented. An attempt is undertaken to review most of the research works (computational and experimental as well as a limited number of field applications) performed over more than five decades. After evaluating aqueous and non-aqueous thermal methods, a comparative analysis is presented.
Conventional crude oil is the currently dominant but a non-renewable energy resource. Despite the development and improvement of alternative energy technologies, there is still a large gap between the capability of renewable energy systems to capture and reliably supply power, and the ever-increasing global energy demand requirements. Therefore, until technological innovations facilitate sufficient energy generation through alternative fuels, other means of sustaining crude oil production, such as Improved Oil Recovery (IOR) methods, must be systematically explored. Beyond increasing production of conventional oil, IOR methods can effectively facilitate the extraction of oil from unconventional reservoirs, such as heavy oil fields. This capability is of high strategic importance due to the considerably large size of global heavy oil reserves.
There are several IOR technologies available, but each of them is suitable only for certain oil field types. The aim of this paper is to illustrate an alternative, low-cost, quick screening method which is competitive to more technically laborious and costly methods for selecting the most suitable technology for a given heavy oil extraction project, using a limited dataset. A two-stage technology screening method is hereby proposed: the first stage is based on previous project literature data evaluation, and the second stage is based on simple empirical oil production correlation methods (such as the Marx & Langenheim model) coupled with Ingen’s RAVE (Risk and Value Engineering) and Schlumberger’s PIPESIM software applications. The new method can achieve reasonably accurate results and minimise cost and time requirements during the preliminary stages of an oilfield development project, as evidenced via a comprehensive case study.
In the process of extracting oil from the stratum, mechanical equipment is used to lift the crude oil in the well to the ground, and the sucker rod pump is the main oil extraction equipment. A sucker rod pump is a special form of reciprocating pump. The power is transmitted from the ground to the downhole through the sucker rod so that the plunger of the sucker rod pump moves up and down to lift the crude oil in the oil well along the tubing to the ground.
At present, a hollow ring-through cable downhole pump is used in conjunction with a hollow sucker rod on site to realize the heating and viscosity reduction of the crude oil under the pump, in the pump, and on the pump to produce heavy oil. The moving valve and fixed valve of the hollow ring through the cable pump are of sliding sleeve type. During operation, the fixed valve seat and the pump barrel go down the well with the tubing, the plunger assembly, fixed valve, and sliding sealing sleeve go down the well with the sucker rod, and the sliding sealing sleeve passes through the fixed valve seat.
The hollow ring-through cable downhole pump has two drawbacks. One is that it may be lifted to the upper part of the fixed valve seat during the pumping process, causing the pump to fail; the other is that the fixed valve swings due to the thin and long lower plunger, which is not suitable for use in inclined wells.
This design consists of a pump cartridge assembly, a plunger assembly, a floating pump cartridge assembly and a fixed valve assembly. The fixed valve assembly is connected to the lower end of the pump barrel assembly, and the upper part of the fixed valve assembly is a fixed valve seat.
The lower part is a centralizing limit sleeve, the lower end of the plunger assembly is a slender lower plunger, the floating pump barrel assembly floats on the lower plunger, the upper part of the floating pump barrel assembly is a fixed valve, and the lower part is a locking claw for fixing The lower end of the valve has a fixed valve centralizing block to match the inner hole of the fixed valve seat, and the upper end of the locking claw also has a lower centralizing body to match the inner hole of the centralizing limit sleeve, which prevents the fixed valve from swinging.
During the pumping process, when the locking claw reaches the centralizing limit sleeve, it will encounter resistance and stop moving upwards, thereby avoiding the failure of the pumping pump due to the floating pump barrel assembly separating from the fixed valve seat; the fixed valve centralizer is always in the inner hole of the fixed valve seat, The lower centralizer is always matched with the inner hole of the centralization limit sleeve, which ensures the centering of the fixed valve and the fixed valve seat and prevents the swing failure of the fixed valve in the inclined well.
