Visualization of Local Scale Deposition in Pipe Conduit Due to Fluid Resources Production

Scale formation in geothermal and petroleum plants could seriously damage the efficiency in the production of fluid resources. An elaborate modeling of the phenomena taking the local scale deposition of complex shape into account is extremely effective in the prediction of and the countermeasures to the scale deposition. In this research, we aimed to improve the scale simulation method including a full set of forces acting on silica particles and to stabilize of hydrodynamic calculation. Based on the theory of colloidal particle motion applied in previous researches, we newly considered the Brownian motion, the size distribution of silica particles and the scale deposition rate as a function of hydrodynamic parameters. As for the description of the behavior of fine particles in macroscopic flow in the Eulerian specification of the flow field, we used the Lattice Boltzmann Method. We simulated the scale growth until reaching the flow path to become blocked up to compare the shape of the scale blocks with those observed in geothermal wells. We clarified the significance of scale simulation with physical factors and the versality of the method for general scale growth in fluid conduit.