Wellhead Desanding

Wellhead Desanding

Wells producing sand at start up or during work over require a high pressure wellhead desander to be installed at the wellhead, prior to the choke valve.

Typically this occurs during:

• Initial Well Flowrates - Flowing the well at low flowrates to initiate sand production
• Sand Flushing - This is the most efficient sand lifting operation and is used to remove as much of the sand from the well as possible.
• Conditioning - Flowing the well at actual production flowrate to stabilise the well.
• Foam Desanding - This operation uses coiled tubing to remove sand from sections of the downhole production tubing. The foam is made from a combination of chemicals, seawater and nitrogen. Reservoir fluids are not produced through the wellhead desander during this operation.

The flow from the well in these instances can include a mixture of fluids (oil, water, chemicals), gas, and sand.

Merpro wellhead desanders are designed to accomodate high wellhead pressures and temperatures while being flexible to be adapted to handle the mixture of fluids, gas and sand.

The main process equipment consists of a wellhead desander vessel with a desanding cyclone, an accumulator vessel and interlock valving. The accumulator vessel has a TORE® fitted to hydrotransport the accumulated sands.

Gas Desanding

On gas wells the desanding cyclone is specially designed so that the sand particles, entrained in the gas flow, do not erode the internal surfaces of the cyclone.