Air Fin Cooler on Wellheads 1

[Weko]

Dear All,

We are undergoing an Gas Plant Sweetening project. My Client is installing an Air Fin Cooler on the Wellheads, before entering the pipeline. The initial use was to reduce the temperature because he said it was too hot for any underground wrapping.

Because he already installed the Air Fin Cooler. He said, "Why not that we reduce also the fluid temperature, so that SS316L can be used instead of Incoloy / Incoloy cladding".

What I my concern is it realiable to depend on an Air Fin Cooler on Wellheads, to downgrade your material selection?

As we know, fluid from well is a 3 phase fluid, and also contain sands. Sometimes the tubes is will be clogged and the heat transfer efficiency will go down. Altough he will provide a 3 x 50% capacity, it will not be practical to clean your Air Fin tubes oftenly.

Is this Air Fin Cooler usage in an upstream onshore Wellheads are commonly use?

 

[zdas04]

It is not unheard of, but it is far from "common". Where I've used them, the goal was to get the fluids closer to ground temperature to allow condensation to happen prior to putting fluids into the pipe (i.e., to minimize the condensation in the gas line), not to allow a different piping material.

If I started down this road, I'd make sure I had a control on high cooler outlet temp so I could choke the well back as temp approached the limit for the piping material.

I always hate installing surface equipment that can limit reservoir performance in order to protect surface artifacts. I only want to control flow from a well for reservoir reasons, never for equipment-limitations. That strategy tends to increase ultimate recovery by 20-60% of OGIP (or OOIP). In one field we increased the recovery per well from a projected 3 BsCF/well to 20 BsCF/well (nearly 7000%, but that was a really special case). At $3/MSCF that is $34 million/well (undiscounted)--the extra $100k we spent on surface kit was a pretty good investment.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. —Galileo Galilei, Italian Physicist

 

[processendbd]

Cas we not use water cooling system? As in our locality water temperature is about 5 deg S cool. And we have available water supply.
Have anyone used it to control the gas well temperature?

 

[zdas04]

In Oil & Gas you always have to consider what you are going to do with the water after the heat exchanger. We can rarely just run it to the ground or to a river (temperature we added can kill fish, big no-no). Even if you can go to irrigation, that is too seasonal. You rarely have access to storm drains (I've never had access to storm drains from wellsites). So if you can get a water source and have a place to go (all day every day, year round) then water cooling is a great option. It has never been an option for me.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. —Galileo Galilei, Italian Physicist

 

[MortenA]

IMO, if you use a cooler to allow for a 316 steel then i would recommend a temperature shut down alarm that would shut in the well if the temperature becase too high.

 

[Weko]

Thanks for the feed back.

Yes, we apply temp shut down incase temp goes high above the limit of the SS

 

[10815L]

Is this water well and producing traces of oil only, I asked just for my knowledge because normally oil and gas wells doesn't have that much hi temp.
10815L

 

[Weko]

this is a gas well.. I dont exactly know the ratio between oil-gas-water...

 

[0707]

YOU CAN PUT Air Fin CoolerS IM PRALEL TO CLEAN ONE RAMAL WHILE THE OTHER IS RUNNING.