Collaborative Laboratories for Environmental Analysis and Remediation, The University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX 76019, United States of America; Inform Environmental, LLC, Dallas, TX 75206, United States of America; Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, The University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX 79968, United States of America.
Collaborative Laboratories for Environmental Analysis and Remediation, The University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX 76019, United States of America; Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, The University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX 76019, United States of America.
Sci Total Environ. 2021 Mar 10;759:143475. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.143475. Epub 2020 Nov 11.
Gas well liquification is a problematic process whereby liquids collect in the wellbore and near wellbore reservoir resulting in production impedance in aging gas wells. Removal of these liquids is traditionally performed through human operated blowdown events; however, this practice results in the release of hydrocarbon emissions into the atmosphere. The removal process, called 'deliquification', can also be accomplished through the utilization of various plunger lift technologies. These allow the extraction of retained fluids from the wellbore and near-wellbore reservoir; however, these technologies vary greatly with respect to automation, intelligence, and efficacy. Here we examined the rates of production loss and the frequency of emission events in mature natural gas wells equipped with various automated plunger lift technologies. Overall, 'intelligent' plunger lift systems that base their optimization on reservoir and wellbore conditions, as opposed to standardized or scheduled operations, performed the best exhibiting a 0.13% loss of production gas to atmospheric emissions compared to a 1.37% loss of production observed from wells without a plunger lift system. Additionally, wells equipped with a next generation reservoir optimized plunger lift demonstrated a reduced rate of production decline compared to those wells without a plunger lift technology (-0.066%/day and -0.242%/day, respectively). These data have widespread implications for the operational and environmental management of a consistently increasing count of aging natural gas production wells.
天然气井的液化是一个有问题的过程，液体在井筒和近井筒储层中积聚，导致老化天然气井的生产受阻。这些液体的清除传统上是通过人工降压作业来完成的；然而，这种做法会导致碳氢化合物排放到大气中。去除这些液体的过程，称为“脱湿”，也可以通过利用各种柱塞举升技术来完成。这些技术允许从井筒和近井筒储层中提取保留的流体；然而，这些技术在自动化、智能化和效果方面有很大的不同。在这里，我们检查了配备各种自动化柱塞举升技术的成熟天然气井的产量损失率和排放事件的频率。总的来说，基于储层和井筒条件进行优化的“智能”柱塞举升系统，与标准化或计划作业相比，表现最好，其向大气排放的生产天然气损失率为 0.13%，而没有柱塞举升系统的井的生产损失率为 1.37%。此外，与没有柱塞举升技术的井相比，配备新一代储层优化柱塞举升的井的产量下降速度较慢（分别为-0.066%/天和-0.242%/天）。这些数据对不断增加的老化天然气生产井的运营和环境管理具有广泛的影响。
