Summary
The factors that control the performance of sand-control screens that use
woven metal mesh as the filter media (i.e., commonly called premium screens),
are not, generally, well understood by the end user. The end user is told that
premium sand-control screens use filter media such as Dutch, Dutch Twill, or a
Reverse Dutch Twill woven metal mesh, and in some cases the manufacturer will
promote the benefit of multiple layers of woven-metal-mesh filter in the screen
to control the sand. All this information is interesting, but the end user
really does not understand the significance of the information.
This paper presents the results of a study to evaluate the effect of
different metal-mesh weaves on the performance (e.g., dirt holding capacity,
and plugging tendency) of media commonly used in sand-control screens. The work
also introduces a new approach to designing sand-control screens that use
woven-metal-mesh material. The performance criteria used in the evaluation of
different designs for the filter media include the control of solids and the
impact of particle size distribution on the formation of plugging on the
surface and in the filtration media. Laboratory testing demonstrates that use
of a different type of construction of the retention/filtration media allows
for greater performance than media currently used in premium sand-control
screens.
The significance of the approach discussed in this paper is the ability to
design and engineer a premium sand-control screen with a retention/filtration
medium for a given particle size distribution of the formation that allows for
maximum oil production and minimum solids production. Critical to the success
of this approach to designing sand-control screens is the thorough
evaluation/testing of multiple media types to create the "formation
specific" design.
Introduction
There has been a lot of work done over the years dealing with the selection
and testing of sand-control screens (see references). The initial work in the
industry focused on determining the optimum slot width for a slotted liner or
wire-wrapped screen based on bridging theory. Over the past several years,
sand-control screens that use some type of woven metal mesh, which are
generally called premium screens, came on the market. The criteria for
selecting the premium screens initially used the same bridging theory as
wire-wrapped screens. As more and more premium-screen manufacturers provided
more and more different types of screens, a need grew to evaluate the
performance of the premium screens. Various methods were developed that
evaluated the performance of the premium screens on the basis of some version
of a plugging test.
Even with the advent of the various plugging tests, much is not understood
about woven-metal-mesh sand-control screens. One supplier will advertise a
250-µ sand-control screen, and another will advertise the same thing but will
claim it is "better," meaning that it takes the "better"
sand-control screen longer to plug than the competition. The end user may then
conduct some type of "plugging tests" to confirm the claims of the
manufacturers and choose the sand-control screen that takes the longest to plug
for the completion. However, the end user is faced with the real fact that it
will not be too long before another manufacturer will show up claiming to have
an even better sand-control screen because of a new type of woven metal
mesh.
There are a large number of weaves that the sand-control screen
manufacturers have to choose from, and these manufacturers are not experts in
the area of woven metal meshes. Therefore, several types are generally tested
by the screen manufacturer in order to provide the best product for the
customer, yet provide a competitive advantage for the company. This is just
good business. The manufacturer and the end user, however, still do not really
understand why one weave works better than another from one application to
another. This paper does not attempt to explain how or why one weave is better
than another for different applications. The purpose of this paper is to show
the results of a methodical approach to evaluating different weave types for
different formations and a unique approach to optimizing premium sand-control
screens.
© 2008. Society of Petroleum Engineers
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History
- Original manuscript received:
27 October 2006
- Meeting paper published:
5 December 2006
- Revised manuscript received:
17 January 2008
- Manuscript approved:
21 January 2008
- Version of record:
15 September 2008
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