Design and Implementation of Retention/Filtration Media for Sand Control

Abstract

Summary The factors that control the performance of sand-control screens that use woven metal mesh as the filter media (i.e., commonly called premium screens), are not, generally, well understood by the end user. The end user is told that premium sand-control screens use filter media such as Dutch, Dutch Twill, or a Reverse Dutch Twill woven metal mesh, and in some cases the manufacturer will promote the benefit of multiple layers of woven-metal-mesh filter in the screen to control the sand. All this information is interesting, but the end user really does not understand the significance of the information. This paper presents the results of a study to evaluate the effect of different metal-mesh weaves on the performance (e.g., dirt holding capacity, and plugging tendency) of media commonly used in sand-control screens. The work also introduces a new approach to designing sand-control screens that use woven-metal-mesh material. The performance criteria used in the evaluation of different designs for the filter media include the control of solids and the impact of particle size distribution on the formation of plugging on the surface and in the filtration media. Laboratory testing demonstrates that use of a different type of construction of the retention/filtration media allows for greater performance than media currently used in premium sand-control screens. The significance of the approach discussed in this paper is the ability to design and engineer a premium sand-control screen with a retention/filtration medium for a given particle size distribution of the formation that allows for maximum oil production and minimum solids production. Critical to the success of this approach to designing sand-control screens is the thorough evaluation/testing of multiple media types to create the "formation specific" design.