ABSTRACT
One of the earliest works on predicting temperature profiles in a flowing well was presented by Kirkpatrick (1959). He presented a simple flowing temperature gradient chart that could be used to predict gas lift valve temperatures at the injection depth. Much of the classic work in this area was developed by Ramey (1962), who presented approximate methods for predicting the temperature of either a single-phase incompressible liquid or a single-phase ideal gas flow in injection and productionwells. Satter (1965) later improvedRamey’smethod by considering phase changes that occur within steam injection projects. Shiu and Beggs (1980) simplified Ramey’s method by correlating for a specific coefficient in Ramey’s equation. Hagoort (2004) assessed Ramey’s classic method for the calculation of temperatures in injection and production wells. He showed that Ramey’s method was an excellent approximation, except for an early transient period inwhich the calculated temperatures are significantly overestimated. He presented a simple graphical correlation to estimate the length of this early transient period.Willhite (1967) presented a detailed analysis of the overall heat transfer mechanism in an injection well, and Coulter and Bardon (1979) developed a method for predicting temperatures in gas transmission lines. Sagar et al. (1991) presented a simple model suitable for calculation by hand to predict temperature profiles in two-phase flowingwells. Hagoort (2007) presented a simple and physically transparent analytical solution for the prediction of wellbore temperatures in gas production wells. In this research, modelswere built only for the prediction of temperature profiles that assume steady-state conditions, but not for pressure profiles.
