Decaying Swirl Flow and Particle Behavior through the Hole Cleaning Device for Horizontal Drilling of Fossil Fuel

Jingyu Qu, Tie Yan, Xiaofeng Sun, Zijian Li and Wei Li
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Jingyu Qu: College of Petroleum Engineering, Northeast Petroleum University, Daqing 163318, China
Tie Yan: College of Petroleum Engineering, Northeast Petroleum University, Daqing 163318, China
Xiaofeng Sun: College of Petroleum Engineering, Northeast Petroleum University, Daqing 163318, China
Zijian Li: Department of Engineering and Applied Science, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NF A1B3X5, Canada
Wei Li: College of Petroleum Engineering, Northeast Petroleum University, Daqing 163318, China

Energies, 2019, vol. 12, issue 3, 1-15

Abstract: The hole cleaning device is a powerful application which can effectively slow down the deposition of cuttings during drilling. However, in this complicated swirl flow created by the device, the decay of the swirl flow and the particle behavior are not evident yet. In this paper, the decay of the swirl flow and the particle behavior in the swirl flow field are studied by the Eulerian–Eulerian two-fluid model (TFM) coupled with the kinetic theory of granular flows (KTGF), and sliding mesh (SM) technique for simulating the fluid flow. The results show that the swirl intensity decays exponentially along the flow direction under laminar flow conditions. The swirl flow has a longer acting distance at a higher rotational speed, which can effectively slow down the deposition of cutting particles. The initial swirl intensity of swirl flow induced by the blades increases significantly with the increase of blade height and the decrease of the blade angle. The tangential velocity of the cutting particles in the annulus is more significant near the central region, gradually decreases toward the wall in the radial direction, and rapidly decreases to 0 at the wall surface. The decay rate is negatively correlated with the initial swirl intensity. The results presented here may provide a useful reference for the design of the hole cleaning device.

Keywords: hole cleaning device; two-fluid model; decaying swirl flow; particle behavior; numerical simulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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