Design of Progressive Cavity Pump Wells

Abstract Progressive cavity pumps (PCPs) are a special type of rotary positive displacement pumps. PCP was first introduced in petroleum engineering as an artificial lift method in 1970's, and is becoming a popular lift tool for its advantages of broader applications, less maintenance, and higher efficiency. PCP performances have been studied for many years, but no published paper has discussed the relation of pump performances with well performances systematically. This paper analyzes the system performances of PCP wells. Using nodal analysis method, the paper presents algorithms and procedures to design pump rotational speed and production rate from well inflow and outflow performances. For the effect of viscosity on pump volumetric slip, unlike traditional methods of trying to set up a general correlation for all PCP types, the paper propose a method to correct the effect of viscosity on each pump's catalog performance curves, and demonstrates how to use the corrected performances to design the pumping of viscous fluid. By unfolding a PCP cavity and using simplified slot flow, this paper presents correlations to determine the critical pump intake pressures for filling pump cavity completely for Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids. The presented algorithms can be used not only to design a PCP well for pump rotational speed and production rate, but also to analyze the performance of a PCP pumping well. The presented correlations of the viscosity effect on slippage and the critical pump intake pressure are useful in PCP design and system analysis.