Temperature Behavior in Multilateral Wells: Application to Intelligent Well
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AbstractIntelligent well completions are being increasingly used in complex wells (horizontal, multilateral, or multibranching). Such completions are equipped with permanent sensors to measure temperature and pressure profiles, which then must be interpreted to determine the inflow profiles of the various phases produced. Distributed temperature measurements using fiber optics in particular are becoming increasingly applied The value of an intelligent completion hinges on our capability to extract such inflow profiles, or, as a minimum, to locate the entry locations of undesirable water or gas entries. In this paper, we develop a model of temperature behavior in multilateral wells. The model predicts the temperature profiles in the build sections connecting the laterals to each other or to a main wellbore, accounting for the changing well angle relative to the temperature profile in the earth. In addition, energy balance equations applied at each junction predict the effects of mixing on the temperature above each junction.We applied the multilateral wellbore temperature model to a wide range of cases to determine the conditions for which intelligent completions are most useful. Parameters varied included fluid thermal properties, absolute values of temperature and pressure, geothermal gradient, flow rates from each lateral, and the trajectories of each build section. From this parametric study, guidelines for the optimal application of intelligent well completions are represented.
