Numerical modeling of CaCO3 mineral scale deposition in oil and gas production well taking into account the effect of fluid dynamics and chemical reaction kinetics

Abstract

Mineral scale deposition (especially CaCO3) is a severe problem at many oil fields, in which the scale adheres to the inner surface of the production tubing and the pre-processing facilities causing significant reduction of flow rate and damage the production system. Recently, many researches have been conducted by oil and gas company in Vietnam to study this subject based on production data and experimental results using commercial software for example ScaleChem and ScaleSoftPitzer. The previous mentioned commercial software only uses thermodynamics approach without consider the effect of fluid dynamics and chemical reaction kinetics. Moreover, there is still a lack of intensive researches on the physical and chemical phenomena associated with CaCO3 mineral scale deposition. This paper presents the construction of an integrated model in which the mechanism of mineral scale deposition is fully characterized by not only thermodynamics but also fluid dynamics and chemical reaction kinetics. The developed model can be used to build CaCO3 scaling profile for oil and gas production wells.