Thermal Coupled Model for Wellbore Flow Profiling of Geothermal Wells

Summary This study aims to produce wellbore flow profile of a well producing a single-phase flow of geothermal brine in a single system using the layer permeability and skin values. The thermal model allows to history match of parameters using spatial and temporal temperature and/or pressure data sets along the wellbore using distributed temperature sensing (DTS). It solves transient mass, momentum, and energy conservation equations simultaneously for both reservoir and wellbore and accounts for effects of the Joule-Thomson (J-T), adiabatic expansion, conduction, and convection. The results of the model are verified with the results from a commercial simulator. The transient wellbore model better captures the early time spatial wellbore temperature profile as compared to the steady-state model, therefore it should be preferred for history matching. The simulator also computes bottom hole rate and wellhead flowing pressure/temperature for such tests' design purposes.