Engineering Commons^™

An Improved Foam Modeling Technique And Its Application To Petroleum Drilling And Production Practice, Yanfang Wang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Foam is one of the most common used multiphase fluid in Underbalanced Drilling (UBD) and Managed Pressure Drilling (MPD). Because of its low density, high capacity of lifting and carrying cuttings, low cost and compatibility with formations, foam has become more superior than the conventional drilling mud when depleted reservoir pressure, severe lost circulation, or unstable borehole are encountered. In general, the success of foam applications rely on the understanding of the fundamentals of foam rheology in downhole conditions.

Foam rheology has been studied for decades. Conventional foam rheological models such as Power Law, Bingham Plastic, Herschel-Bulkley to explain foam …

Development Of Reduced Order Models Using Reservoir Simulation And Physics Informed Machine Learning Techniques, Mark V. Behl Jr

LSU Master's Theses

Reservoir simulation is the industry standard for prediction and characterization of processes in the subsurface. However, simulation is computationally expensive and time consuming. This study explores reduced order models (ROMs) as an appropriate alternative. ROMs that use neural networks effectively capture nonlinear dependencies, and only require available operational data as inputs. Neural networks are a black box and difficult to interpret, however. Physics informed neural networks (PINNs) provide a potential solution to these shortcomings, but have not yet been applied extensively in petroleum engineering.

A mature black-oil simulation model from Volve public data release was used to generate training data …

Adsorption And Reconfiguration Of Amphiphiles At Silica-Water Interfaces: Role Of Electrostatic Interactions, Van Der Waals Forces And Hydrogen Bonds, Yao Wu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The ability to explore and predict metastable structures of hybrid self-assemblies is of central importance for the next generation of advanced materials with novel properties. As compared to their thermodynamically stable forms, the kinetically stabilized materials show improved functionality potentially over their stable counterparts. The self-assembly processes usually originate from weak intermolecular interactions, involving a dynamic competition between attractive and repulsive interactions. These weak forces, including van der Waals (vdW), electrostatic interaction and the hydrogen bonding (H-bonding), can be tuned by external stimuli, e.g., confinement, temperature and ionization, and consequently driving hybrid materials into different configurations. It is challenging to …

Centrifugal Microfluidic Platform For Solid-Phase-Extraction (Spe) And Fluorescence Detection Applications, Yong Zhang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Solid phase extraction (SPE) is a widely used method to separate and concentrate the target molecules in liquid mixture. Traditional SPE has to be conducted in the laboratory with professional equipment and skilled operators. The microfluidic and 3D printing technology have opened up the opportunity in developing miniaturized automatic instruments. The main contribution of this research is to integrate the SPE process on a novel centrifugal platform. Various valves are applied on the platform to help control the aqueous sample and reagents in the cartridge.

First, a centrifugal microfluidic platform was built for automatically detecting trace oil pollution in water. …

A Modelling Study For Smart Pigging Technique For Pipeline Leak Detection, Caitlyn Judith Thiberville

LSU Master's Theses

Although leak incidents continue, a pipeline remains the most reliable mode of transportation within the oil and gas industry. It becomes even more important today because the projection for new pipelines is expected to increase by 1 billion BOE through 2035. In addition, increasing number and length of subsea tiebacks face new challenges in term of data acquisition, monitoring, analysis, and remedial actions. Passive leak-detection methods commonly used in the industry have been successful with some limitations in that they often cannot detect small leaks and seeps. In addition to a thorough review of related topics, this study investigates how …