Abstract Horizontal well based thermal recovery processes have been widely applied to recover the heavy oil resources all over the world. But, the flow behavior of hot fluids along a horizontal wellbore is still unclear. In this paper, a scaled cylindrical wellbore model is designed to experimentally simulate the steam injection process using horizontal well. Based on this model, a set of experiments are firstly performed to analyze the steam injection profile along horizontal wellbore. And the effects of different sensitive parameters on stream conformance are discussed. Results indicate that different steam injection operation can yield a different heating performance. During steam injection process, the wellbore segments closed to the steam outflow point can have a better heating performance. In comparison, a high steam injection rate is more beneficial on the uniform steam conformance along horizontal wellbore. The two-ends steam injection strategy can produce a more uniform steam injection profile than the single heel/toe end injection method. The addition of non-condensable gas (NCG) can also improve the steam conformance along horizontal wellbore. Moreover, from the experimental observation, it is also observed that the permeability heterogeneity along the horizontal wellbore is a significantly important parameter on the steam injection profile. The well completion method tremendously impacts the steam conformance along horizontal wellbore. For field operation, in order to obtain a more uniform steam conformance, it should be avoided to place the horizontal well in a high heterogeneous area, and slotted liner will be the preferred method for a horizontal well based thermal recovery process.

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水平井注汽剖面试验研究

摘要 水平井热采工艺已在世界范围内广泛应用于稠油资源的采收。但是，热流体沿水平井筒的流动行为仍不清楚。本文设计了一个按比例缩放的圆柱井筒模型，对水平井注蒸汽过程进行了实验模拟。在此模型的基础上，首先进行了一组实验，对水平井筒注汽剖面进行了分析。并讨论了不同敏感参数对流一致性的影响。结果表明，不同的蒸汽注入操作可以产生不同的加热性能。在注汽过程中，靠近蒸汽流出点的井眼段具有更好的加热性能。相比下，高注蒸汽量更有利于水平井筒均匀蒸汽一致性。与单跟/趾端喷射方法相比，两端蒸汽喷射策略可以产生更均匀的蒸汽喷射剖面。添加不凝气 (NCG) 还可以改善沿水平井筒的蒸汽顺应性。此外，从实验观察中还观察到，沿水平井筒的渗透率非均质性是注汽剖面的一个非常重要的参数。完井方法极大地影响了沿水平井筒的蒸汽一致性。现场作业时，为获得更均匀的蒸汽一致性，应避免将水平井置于高度非均质区域，