[CCoE Notice] Thesis Announcement: Physical Optimization of Hydraulic Fracturing with Unified Fracture Design

[Grayson, Audrey A]

Physical Optimization of Hydraulic Fracturing with Unified Fracture Design

Arjun Ravikumar, Master of Science in Petroleum Engineering

Defense Date: Monday, November 24th 2014 Time: 9:00 am Location Room: Room 124 in the ERP, bldg.9
Committee Members: Dr. W. John Lee, Dr. Michael Myers, Dr.Kaspar Willam


Acid fracturing is a reservoir stimulation technique where a fracture is created by injection of acid into the reservoir instead of conventional proppant slurry. The acid causes differential etching on the fracture walls, creating asperities. These asperities hold up the fracture wall, thus contributing to fracture conductivity.

Acid fracturing is used mainly to stimulate carbonate rock. This technique has certain advantages over conventional fracturing. There is no proppant used, therefore the risk of screenout is nullified. There are also logistic reasons such as transport of proppant, which might make acid fracturing a viable choice.

Theoretically, acid fractures have infinite conductivity in these conduits. This is not always true in practice. In this work, a physical optimization of acid fracturing is performed by utilizing the Unified Fracture Design methodology (UFD, hereforth). Parametric studies are performed to study the dependency of productivity on various factors.
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