A new method of foam drainage technology in loading gas well

Abstract

Foam drainage technology has been widely used to remove the liquid out of pipe in loading gas wells and keep the well normally producing. Still, it has some limitation in application, especially for the wells in low temperature and remote areas, which are commonly protected by the attemperator and alcohol injection in the wellhead. Faced with these limitation, we propose a new way, which owns the following advantages: 1) it keeps the original devices, 2) it solves the problem of hardly dissolvability of original injecting alcohol and newly injecting defoamer, and makes use of the alcohol injecting equipment as co-defoaming process, 3) the ability of anti-freezing and defoaming is maintained, which is the base of application, 4) the main costs of the new method are the expense of necessary chemical agents, making the method quite economical. Further, the new method was applied into the severely loading gas well, it turned out that the effect of anti-freezing and defoaming was obvious and the well had been brought back into live. Besides, the frequency of shut-in was reduced by a large extent. Our study suggests that the new method could be popularized in remote gas wells in low temperature environment if suitable foamer, defoamer and emulsifier could be provided.