THEORETICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH OF PRESSURE DROP FOR VARIABLE MASS INTERMITTENT FLOW IN HORIZONTAL WELLBORE FLOW

Intermittent flow is a very important flow pattern in actual gas - liquid two phase flow in horizontal wellbore.Due to similarities and difference between gas liquid two phase flow in a regular horizontal pipe and in a horizontal wellbore, it is anticipated that some methods of calculating pressure drop valid for regular pipe flow need modification or extension for wellbore flow. This paper applying mass and momentum balance equation to gas and liquid phase respectively, considering the influence of wall inflow or outflow, obtain a new method of calculating pressure drop of gas liquid two phase variable mass intermittent flow in horizontal wellbore. At the same time, experimental device is designed and established for the horizontal wellbore variable mass flow. The pressure drop experiments of single liquid phase inflow from single perforation upside wall,and single liquid phase inflow from single perforation downside wall are conducted respectively. A lot of experimental data are obtained. Pressure drop experimental data agree with the theoretical calculated results well, it shows this method is valuable.