Determining a Correlation Between Sand Monitor Output and Sand Production Rate

Matthew J. Sampson, Master’s Student, Mechanical Engineering

First Place, Student Research Colloquium 2001

Sand production control is a major problem for the oil and gas industry. As sand particles move with the produced fluid through the production system they can cause erosional damage that in turn leads to production losses, high operating cost and lower operating efficiency. Erosional damage is influenced by many factors including fluid properties, sand concentration, particle size, particle sharpness, and particle impact velocity. The most important of these are sand concentration and particle impact velocity. By using a properly calibrated sand monitor the sand concentration and impact velocity can be found. For this research, a commercially available acoustic type sand monitor is used to quantify the amount of sand and evaluate particle impact velocity in several multiphase flow conditions. The sand monitor is mounted on a flow loop in which the sand concentration, superficial liquid velocity and superficial gas velocity are known. Output data from the sand monitor is gathered and analyzed for sand concentrations from zero to three percent sand by weight of liquid, superficial liquid velocity of 0.08 ft/sec to 14.55 ft/sec and superficial gas velocity of zero to 100 ft/sec. This data was used to generate a series of graphs that will help to quantify the amount of sand in different flow conditions based on the output from the sand monitor. The social and economic impact of the research is discussed.