Numerical Study on Flow and Heat Transfer of Supercritical Water Injection in Wellbores

With the gradual depletion of the world's oil and gas resources, heavy oil recovery has become increasingly important. Supercritical water flooding is a promising enhanced oil recovery technology because it could enhance deep extra heavy oil recovery and in-situ upgrade the recovered oil. It is critical to predict the injection parameters to make the pilot program of supercritical water injection. In this paper, a computational model has been developed for predicting supercritical water injection in wellbores. Frictional pressure drop correlations are selected according to different flow patterns. For single-phase flow of supercritical water, resistance coefficients in critical area are modified. The calculation results agree well with the field test results. And the influences of injection parameters on flow and heat transfer are analyzed.