Synergy Vacuum Insulated Tubings
Features
The VIT is highly insulated tubing, featuring major innovations for the insulation materials and design. This revolutionary pipe-in-pipe can be used to transport:
- Oil from the reservoir to the surface while keeping the crude hot and avoiding wax deposition
- High quality steam downhole
The coupling is the weakest thermal point for existing insulated systems. For a classically insulated pipe more than 80% of the heat loss is through the junction. Synergy offers 2 solutions to dramatically reduce the heat loss at the coupling.
Moreover the VIT fulfill two other major requirements of the industry for insulated tubing:
- To fit any tubing and any coupling base on your standard.
- To use high performance insulation material, innovative in our industry, but already in service for many years in the nuclear industry for example.
The three main features are:
- Dedicated bayonet type connection design
- Overall U-value less than 0.8 W/(m².K)
- Operating temperatures up to 350°C
- Much longer life than other vacuum insulated tubings thanks to softer vacuum.
Applications
The VIT can be used with benefits in several application categories:
Production assurance : To ensure the flow of the upward recovered oil or gas. For example, waxy and paraffinic oilfields may require a highly insulated tubings to keep producing. For the gas wells, many studies show the benefit of a high insulation to postpone the gas well self-killing.
Protect the completion : In cold environment or in case of APB, the VIT strongly reduces the heat transfer between the transported fluid and the tubing's environment to protect the well integrity.
Steam injection : To optimize the oil recovery, VIT helps maintaining a much better downhole steam quality. Its design have been developed for HPHT conditions : the conducted fluid in the VIT can be at a temperature up to 600°F (315°C).
Benefits
The VIT offers an excellent thermal performance. The heat losses are strongly reduced compared to the others solutions on the market (more than 7 times). Its design is suitable for HPHT, which opens new perspectives for the insulation requirements for deep well and for steam injection. The development of the VIT was made in collaboration with completion experts to fulfill the main requirements in terms of completion: compact, the VIT fits any tubing and any coupling and no additional installation work is required: as easy to install as your standard tubing. The adaptation of insulation material used in the nuclear industry leads to a cost driven innovative solution with a quick pay back thanks to the energy and operations savings.
Synergy VIT were designed in order to drastically reduce the heat losses at the junction between pipes where industry consider that 90% of heat losses occur in conventional insulating tubings, leading to overall U-values over 5 W/(m².K) or 1 BTU/hr-ft²-°F even if k-value on the body are as low as 0.0026 W/(m.K) or 0.0015 BTU/hr-ft-°F.
Synergy VIT annulus pressure is about 10,000 times higher than the conventional VIT, therefore there is no degradation of the insulation performances over time due to outgassing.
