In today’s modern thermal enhanced oil recovery (TEOR) projects, it is important to accurately measure and control the injected heat, in the form of steam, at each injector.  Optimum project oil recovery and economics result from applying the latest Steam Measurement Technology.  DAN-STM is now available from EN-FAB, Inc. 

At Texaco’s Kern River steamflood operations in Bakersfield, California, a novel technique using an orifice plate in series with a critical flow choke has been developed and tested in the field.  The initial test results for the DAN-STM system were reported to the industry at the Society of Petroleum Engineers 1988 California regional meeting (SPE #17445).  Additional testing and calibration of the system was done at Texaco’s state-of-the-art high pressure steam research facility in Bellaire, Texas.

Critical flow chokes are typically installed at steam injection wellheads to control steam injection rate.  However, both steam quality and mass flowrate cannot be determined from this device alone.  The addition of an orifice plate upstream of the critical flow choke, provides a second measurement device so that independent equations for mass flowrate through each of these devices can be solved simultaneously to determine both mass flowrate and steam quality.  By taking advantage of existing  chokes, the addition of an orifice plate gives a simple practical way to determine steam quality and mass flowrate.  All engineering computations are performed utilizing Daniel’s Series 2500 Microcomputer.