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Study of an Electrical Submersible Pump (ESP) as Flow Meter

Article · May 2013

DOI: 10.2118/165065-MS

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SPE 165065

Study of an Electrical Submersible Pump (ESP) as Flow Meter

M. P. Varón; J. L. Biazussi; A. C. Bannwart; W. Monte Verde, SPE, Unicamp; N. Sassim, SPE, Cepetro/Unicamp.

Copyright 2013, Society of Petroleum Engineers

This paper was prepared for presentation at the SPE Artificial Lift Conference-Americas held in Cartagena, Colombia 21-22 May 2013.

This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE program committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents of the paper have not been
reviewed by the Society of Petroleum Engineers and are subject to correction by the author(s). The material does not necessar ily reflect any position of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, its
officers, or members. Electronic reproduction, distribution, or storage of any part of this paper without the written consent of the Society of Petroleum Engineers is prohi bited. Permission to
reproduce in print is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words; illustrations may not be copied. The abstract must contain conspicuous acknowledgment of SPE copyright.

Abstract

ESP (Electrical Submersible Pump) is one the most important artificial lift methods for oil in Brazil and worldwide. In this
method, the centrifugal pump is driven by an electric motor directly coupled to the pump shaft. ESPs are commonly provided
with a set of sensors that monitor the motor operation, temperature and head.
Measurement of liquid flow rate produced by each well is traditionally performed with specialized, costly instrumentation.
As the motor sensor and the frequency inverter that drives the ESP provide useful information for pump monitoring and well
management, the local flow rate through the ESP could also be determined from in-field calibration curves relating the flow
rate with monitored data. Specifically, the head generated by the ESP and/or the electrical power consumed by the motor,
which are usual performance curves describing the pump behavior, can be related to the flow rate of the fluid being produced.
Appraisal of such flow rate measurement techniques should of course be based on the uncertainties propagated from each
calibration curve. In this study, ESP performance curves of head and electrical power obtained at different operating
conditions (including two-phase and viscous fluids) are used to determine the uncertainties in the liquid flow rate
measurement from the curves. Results on the suitability of each method are discussed in the light of the API RP 11S2
standard, which establishes the best practices for ESP testing.

Introduction

Continuous flow rate measurement of the oil and gas produced by each well has been a challenge for offshore applications
inn view of the complexity of petroleum fluids, field constraints and costs. Sub-sea multiphase metering and surface metering
for each well are costly and usually discontinuous.

The Electrical Submersible Pump (ESP) is widely used in the oil industry as an artificial lifting method [1]. Its principle of
operation consists in the action of a multistage centrifugal pump usually installed, for offshore applications, either within the
well or on the sea floor. Each stage consists in an impeller-diffuser pair. The impeller provides energy to the fluid in form of
pressure and kinetic energy; the diffuser further converts part of this kinetic energy into additional pressure gain. As a result,
the fluid passing through ta multistage pump increases significantly its pressure, which adds to the reservoir pressure to lead
the fluid up to the surface facilities at the desired flow rate.

The complete ESP equipment consists of a centrifugal multistage pump, an electric motor that provides mechanical power to
the pump and a mechanical seal that communicates the pump shaft to the motor and isolate the reservoir fluids, among other
functions. On surface there is a frequency inverter and a set up transformer whose function is to operate the bottom
equipment to feed and control the motor remotely via a power cable. Most new inverters have modules that allow automated
control, protection and storing of the data from the sensors.
The installation of a set of sensors on the motor base is a common practice of ESP manufacturers, to provide real-time
information on pressure gain (head), fluid temperature at the intake, motor temperature, and other variables to monitor the
equipment, such as vibration and leakage current. This information is sent up to the surface through the same power cable by
DC signals overlapping to AC signal that feeds the motor.
2 SPE 165065

The artificial lift via ESP is one the most important methods worldwide, corresponding to production volumes comparable to
gas-lift. The ESP method presents significant advantages over other methods once it can be applied to both light and heavy
oil production. It operates quite satisfactorily at intake pressures high enough to provide low gas void fractions. If calibrated
in-field, the possibility of using the ESP as an instrument for measuring the flow rate of fluid being produced is real and
deserves attention. Previous works [2, 3] describe the application of ESP as continuous flow meter for heavy oils.

Objective

This paper presents a study on the uncertainty in the liquid flow rate determined by calibrating the ESP as a flow meter. Two
types of calibration curves are tested, one expressing the liquid flow rate as a function of the head and the other using the
electrical power. The calibration curves are first determined for single phase water flow and its mixtures with a gaseous
phase, at different gas mass flow rates and intake pressures. In a second series of experiments the effect of viscosity on the
curves is investigated. The two forms of the calibration curves are evaluated independently by their uncertainties associated
with the determination of the liquid flow rate. Acceptability criteria for the uncertainties are taken according to the API RP
11S2 standard [4] which establishes the recommended practices for ESP testing.

The test pump chosen for this study was the Centrilift P47 model series 538 with 3 stages. The liquid viscosities are varied by
using water at ambient temperature and mineral oil at different temperatures, covering the range 1-180 cP. Air was used as
gas phase, with flow rates varying in the 0-9 m3/h range and intake manometric pressures from 100 through 500 kPa. Two
rotation speeds were studied namely, 2400 and 3500 rpm.

API RP 11S2 Standard

The standard API RP11S2 [4] describes the recommended parameters for ESP testing and assessing its performance with the
goal of establishing consistency of the equipment as a product. This includes acceptance limits for testing by the
manufacturer, seller or user with predetermined minimum specifications.

Tests should be performed with high precision instrumentation that have been previously tested and calibrated. Test results
should have errors lower than 0.5% after considering the allowed uncertainties of the measurement instruments. The standard
specifies the following five-point test:

• Best Efficiency Point (BEP)

• BEP ± 20%

• Open Flow

• Shut-off

The tolerance ranges for instrumentation measurements are shown in Table 1. The percent values are applied to the full scale
of each instrument. In addition, the standard provides ranges for the acceptance limits of ESP performance data, see Table 2.

Table 1. Overall instrument accuracy according to API RP11S2 [4]

Quantity Tolerance (% over full scale)
Flow rate ±1.0
Total head ±1.0
Electrical power ±2.0
RPM ±0.5
BHP ±3.0
Efficiency < ±5.0
SPE Number 3

Table 2. Acceptance limits of pump testing according to API RP11S2 [4].

Curve Limits Where applicable
±5.0% head Over recommended operating
head – flow rate
±5.0% flow rate range
BHP – flow rate ±8.0% BHP Over recommended operating
range
efficiency – flow rate 90% de efficiency BEP

Uncertainty Analysis

The goal of the uncertainty analysis is to quantify the probability of random error in the measured data. Therefore, in the
analysis it is assumed that the measuring instruments are manufactured and calibrated correctly and that the measurement
procedure and the data acquisition methodology are suitable in the specific application.

The mean, given by equation (1) is used to represent the most probable value given by the measuring instrument where the
number of samples is and the measured value of each sample.

∑
(1)

The standard deviation defined by equation (2) is the dispersion of a data set (in this case for the same experimental point ),
that quantifies the absolute random error (or uncertainty) caused by the measuring instrument under the test conditions.

) ] ⁄
[ ∑(
(2)

It is considered that values outside should be checked again, and the values larger than should be discarded. For
a great number of measurements the uncertainty can be considered as [5].

Let be the set of independent variables representing quantities obtained experimentally with absolute error denoted by
and let the dependent variable be calculated from the independent variables with a resulting error denoted by . If
( ), then the propagated error is calculated by equation (3):

[( ) ( ) ( ) ] (3)

The relative uncertainty is calculated by equation (4):

[( ) ( ) ( ) ] (4)

For instance, consider the calibration curves ( ) and ( ) expressing the liquid flow rate through
the ESP as a function of its pressure gain or electrical power , respectively. The corresponding uncertainties
in at point will be, respectively:

( ) ( ) ( )

(5)
( ) ( ) ( )

In equation 5, was considered as the standard deviation of measured variable, thus or , respectively.
Equation 5 shows the importance of the sensitivity coefficients and which derive from each calibration curve. For
4 SPE 165065

each point the relative uncertainty on pressure gain was determined as the standard deviation of the measurements of the
intake pressure and discharge pressure, in the form given by equation 4:

⁄
[( ) ( ) ] (6)

Figure 1. Loop diagram of the ESP experimental bench.

Experimental Setup and Procedure

The experiments were performed at the Petroleum Laboratory (LabPetro) of the Center for Petroleum Studies of the State
University of Campinas (UNICAMP). An experimental apparatus for ESP testing was built with the aim of carry out research
on ESP performance. It was designed to be able to test with different types of pumps, fluids and allow visualization. Figure 1
illustrates the loop diagram of the overall testing bench with basic instrumentation utilized. Table 3 presents the main
variables used for ESP testing. Table 4 gives the accuracy and operating range of the instrumentation utilized.

Table 3. Main variables involved in ESP testing.

Variable Definition Unit
Intake pressure [Pa]
Discharge pressure [Pa]
Laminar flow element pressure [Pa]
Laminar flow element temperature [ºC]
Intake temperature [ºC]
Discharge temperature [ºC]
Liquid mass flow rate [kg/h]
Gas mass flow rate [lbs/h]
Rotational speed [RPM]
Motor shaft torque [N.m]
Electrical power input [W]
Electrical current [A]
SPE Number 5

Table 4. Features and accuracy of the instruments.

Variable Range Accuracy
(0 – 190680 kg/h), ±0.36% (read value)
Coriolis 3”
(0 – 30 lb/h)
±0.28% (read value)
(0 – 13.61 kg/h).
(0 – 54.82 psi)
±0.25% (full scale)
Man
(0 – 125 psi)
±1.0% (full scale)
Man
(0 – 10 bar)
±0.5% (full scale)
Man
- (0 – 100ºC) ±0.05% (full scale)
(0 – 565 N.m) ±0.05% (full scale)
(2.4 – 99999 RPM)
±0.05% (read value)
Digital photo/contact
(0 – 69109 W)
±0.05% (full scale)
Frequency inverter

The data acquisition software was developed in LabView 2011 (National Instruments). An interface was programmed to
gather the measured variables, to operate some remote instruments (frequency inverter of the booster pump and gas valve)
and to store the data in a digital file. For the two-phase experiments, the gas (air) flow rate at the pump intake is related to the
mass flow rate by:

(7)

[ ] (8)

[ ] (9)

[ ] (10)

where and are the intake temperature and pressure, respectively. Each experimental point of the curves was the
mean of 120,000 samples taken during 30 seconds at a rate of 4,000 samples per second after a sufficient period of
stabilization checked by observation. The standard deviation was also determined from this population.

The calibration curves ( ) and ( ) were calculated via polynomial regressions for each operating
condition. From these regressions the sensitivity coefficients and were calculated for each point of the curve.

For the present study the tested pump was the Centrilift P47 model series 538 with three stages (Figure 2).
6 SPE 165065

Figure 2. Centrilift P47 Series 538 ESP with 3 stages (blue) with its intake and gas injector on the left.

Results

The uncertainties in the determination of the liquid rate from calibration curves of head-capacity and power-capacity are
presented for single-phase and two-phase (liquid-gas) flows through the ESP. In the case of two-phase flow, the curves were
constructed assuming that the mass flow rate of gas is known precisely. This may the achieved if an in-field calibration of the
ESP as flow meter is performed.

Figures 3 and 4 show the experimental data used to express the liquid flow rate as function of pressure gain at tested
rotational speeds (3500 and 2400 RPM). In the two-phase curves the surging region points were excluded and special
attention was paid to cover the region around the BEP. As can be seen, the increase of the mass flow rate of gas causes
significant decrease in the head at a given liquid flow rate, as expected. However, the increase of the intake pressure causes a
significant increase of the head, making the curves to approach the single-phase liquid curve; for 3500 RPM the curves for
500 kPa of intake pressure are very close to the water curve for the three gas flow rates tested.
SPE Number 7

Figure 3. Liquid flow rate as a function of head for the ESP operating at 3500 RPM with water-air mixtures.

Figure 4. Liquid flow rate as a function of head for the ESP operating at 2400 RPM with water-air mixtures.

Figure 5 and Table 5 show the propagated uncertainties on the liquid flow rate, calculated from the head-capacity curves
using equation 5. It can be in Figure 5 noted that the uncertainty tends to increase with increasing head, which is expected
because in this condition the flow rate decreases. At a given rotation, the uncertainty increases with increasing the gas flow
rate, but decreases with increasing intake pressure. In Table 3, the uncertainty values that exceed the API standard limit of
5% (Table 2) are written in red. It can be concluded that the uncertainty on liquid flow rate is within the limit of 5% for high
rotation (3500 RPM), low free gas content and intake pressures of 500 kPa and above.
8 SPE 165065

Figure 5. Uncertainty of the liquid flow rate as a function of the head for the ESP operating at 3500 RPM with water-air
mixtures.

Table 5. Uncertainties on the liquid flow rate and head at BEP.

[ ] [ ] [ ⁄ ] ( )[ ⁄ ] ( )[ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]
- 0 23.40 4.28% 65.56 3.44% 49.08%
1.0 24.10 8.36% 42.93 6.80% 41.19%
3.0 3 21.80 8.74% 63.43 5.10% 50.53%
5.0 21.62 8.15% 69.05 5.43% 51.90%
2400 1.0 23.37 14.64% 29.65 9.94% 30.96%
3.0 5 20.81 22.19% 49.36 6.85% 42.83%
5.0 22.39 13.01% 64.36 8.84% 47.18%
3.0 23.40 11.40% 40.13 7.94% 36.41%
7
5.0 24.10 47.66% 55.80 10.93% 43.11%
- 0 33.93 1.79% 139.92 1.38% 55.57%
1.0 35.20 3.39% 107.78 2.24% 49.82%
3
3.0 32.60 2.25% 138.05 1.71% 55.37%
5.0 32.82 5.12% 146.08 2.89% 56.70%
1.0 5 31.58 6.39% 96.77 3.33% 43.54%
3500
3.0 31.63 2.56% 135.45 1.83% 52.87%
1.0 28.94 8.72% 75.74 4.61% 34.76%
3.0 7 31.88 6.36% 113.48 2.57% 48.88%
5.0 31.69 4.89% 142.92 3.05% 55.24%
5.0 9 31.78 3.21% 140.28 2.17% 53.97%

As regards the effect of viscosity, the capacity-head curves for the pump operating at 3500 RPM are shown in Figure 6. The
well-known result that an increase in liquid viscosity causes the head to decrease can be observed.

Figure 7 and Table 6 show the effect of the viscosity on the uncertainty of the liquid flow rate determined from the head-
capacity calibration curves for the two-rotations tested. It is observed the uncertainty increases with the viscosity, a result that
was unexpected at first. A possible explanation for this result is that the viscosity acts as frequency filter, which absorbs the
pressure-velocity oscillations of high frequency and low amplitude but it not capable of dumping the oscillations of low
frequency, whose amplitude larger and, as consequence, a larger uncertainty in the pressure is observed. In fact, the main
SPE Number 9

sources of low frequency/high amplitude oscillations are the shaft rotation (40-60 Hz) and the geometry of the pump intake.
The typical high frequency oscillations for the turbulent flow in pipes are about 102-103 Hz, which could be absorbed by the
viscosity of the fluid.

Figure 6. Liquid flow rate as a function of pressure gain for different viscosities at 3500 RPM.

Figure 7. Uncertainty on the liquid flow rate as a function of the head for 3500 RPM and different liquid viscosities.
10 SPE 165065

Table 6. Uncertainties on the liquid flow rate and head at BEP at different liquid viscosities.

[ ] [ ] ( )[ ⁄ ] ( )[ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]
1 23.20 4.28% 65.56 3.44% 49.08%
23 18.97 6.98% 61.70 6.25% 29.41%
2400 77 16.44 7.07% 61.30 5.86% 22.54%
120 15.53 7.22% 58.74 6.48% 21.52%
180 14.31 12.34% 56.14 10.74% 22.90%
1 33.64 1.79% 139.92 1.38% 55.57%
23 28.07 2.21% 136.61 2.11% 47.28%
3500 77 24.95 2.18% 134.81 1.92% 38.60%
120 23.52 3.11% 131.66 2.45% 34.06%
180 21.08 4.71% 133.46 3.41% 29.11%

Attempts to correlate the liquid flow rate with the electric power consumed by the motor were also made. Figures 8 and 9
show the power as a function the liquid flow rate for the two pump rotations tested.

Figure 8. Electrical power input for the pump working at 3500 RPM at several intake gas flow rates.
SPE Number 11

Figure 9. Electrical power input for the pump operating at 2400 RPM for several intake gas flow rates.

In general, the curves shown in Figures 8 and 9 indicate a decrease in the power consumption when the air flow rate at pump
intake is increased. For 3500 RPM rotation, the electrical power shows the expected behavior, in general. However, in few
cases of two-phase flow the power overcomes the consumed load for single phase fluid. For 2400 RPM in some curves, the
consumed load also overcomes the consumed load at single phase condition at the same liquid flow rate.

This abnormal and unexpected behavior could have different reasons. For a same liquid flow rate, the gas injection generates
a large increase in the liquid velocity, causing an increase in the friction losses that might surpass the reduction in the density
of the mixture; accordingly, a higher consumption of energy in comparison with the single phase fluid would be observed.

Another explanation is that the electric motor of the test bench operates significantly below its nominal load, therefore it
operates with poor efficiency, causing instabilities in the power factor and electrical current. In fact, during the experiments
the maximum load reached was about 37% at 3500 RPM for pump operating with mineral oil at 180 cP. For water and two-
phase flow cases, the loads reached much lower values. Thus, those abormal results are probably due to electrical noise.

Figure 10 shows the uncertainty in the electrical power input for the pump operating with water (single-phase flow). It is
observed that at 3500 RPM most of curve points have uncertainties lower to the API standard limit of 8%. However, at 2400
RPM all points do not exhibit uncertainties lower than 15%. At least for this case, the high electrical noise explanation seems
confirmed.

Figure 11 shows the liquid flow rate uncertainty as a function of the electrical power input for single-phase water flow. The
results reveal uncertainties not lower than about 30% at 3500 RPM and 90% at 2400 RPM. Obviously, those results are
completely outside the limit of 5% for the liquid flow rate. Besides the electrical noise, which becomes too large at 2400
RPM, the explanation of this poor result can also be connected with the poorer sensitivity coefficients exhibited by power-
capacity curves (Figures 8 and 9) in comparison with head-capacity curves.
12 SPE 165065

Figure 10. Electrical power uncertainty as a function of liquid flow rate (single-phase water) for the two rotations tested.

Figure 11. Uncertainty on the liquid flow rate obtained from the power-capacity curve (single-phase water).

Conclusions

In this work the viability of using an ESP as flow meter was studied based on tests with a single pump. The focus was the
determination of the standard deviations and uncertainties of the liquid flow rate from the pressure gain (head) and electrical
power calibration curves, which should be determined in-field. In this work, these curves were determined in laboratory using
well-characterized fluids. The experimental procedure consisted in performing ESP tests with water, water-air mixtures and
mineral oil for two rotation speeds, several gas flow rates, intake pressures and liquid viscosities.

For each tested condition different calibration curves were obtained, leading to different propagations of the uncertainties
associated with the head and electrical power onto the liquid flow rate. For the two-phase flow case, the region known as
surging was identified and excluded to calculate the calibration curves, once clearly the technique of using ESPs as flow
meter should not be used in this region.
 SPE Number 13

According to the performed tests, the method based on the head-capacity curve to calculate the liquid flow rate was much
more accurate than the one based on the power-capacity curve. The electrical power varies relatively little with the flow rate,
reducing the sensivity coefficient and is further subjected to large noises which could not be avoided in the utilized facility;
these led to large uncertainties in the flow rate determination from the electric power.

With regard to the uncertainty on the liquid flow rate determined from the head-capacity curve, the following can be
concluded:

1. For operation with single-phase water flow, the relative uncertainty in the liquid flow rate decreases with increasing flow
rate and rotation. The uncertainties were within API standard limit of 5% around the BEP region at rotations higher than
2400 RPM.

2. For two-phase water-air flow, the relative uncertainty in the liquid flow rate was within API limit of 5% for intake
pressures above to 5 bars (gage) for high rotations for the gas flow rates tested.

3. The operation of an ESP as flow meter with oil at the four viscosities tested is not feasible at 2400 RPM. In contrast, at
3500 RPM all measured points exhibited uncertainties lower than 5%.

In summary, from the tests with water and water-air mixtures, the utilization of the ESP as flow meter based on head-capacity
calibration curves is feasible in the BEP region for intake pressures above 5 bars and close to nominal speed. From the tests
with viscous fluids, the head-capacity method was acceptable for all viscosities tested (<180 cP) and rotations close to
nominal speed.

Acknowledgments
The authors are gratefull to the funding support by PETROBRAS–Petróleo Brasileiro S.A., CNPq-Conselho Nacional de
Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico and PRH-15 Programa de Recursos Humanos da Agência Nacional de Petróleo-
ANP, Brasil.

References
[1] TAKACS, Gabor. Electrical Submersible Pump Manuals: Design, Operations and Maintenance. Burlington: Gulf
Equipment Guides, 2009. 420 p.
[2] BOLIN, W. D. Using the Calibrated-Tested Pumping Instrument (ESP) for Continuous Fluid Measurement when
Producing Heavy Oil Wells. Texas: SPE paper, 2007. 8 p.
[3] OLSEN, Helge et al. Successful Production Allocation through ESP Performance in Peregrino Field. Mexico City:
Spe, 2012. 15 p.
[4] AMERICAN PETROLEUM INSTITUTE (Org.). Recommend Practice for Electric Submersible Pump Testing:
API RP11S2. Washington D.C., 2008. 13 p.
[5] HOLMAN, J. P. Experimental Methods for Engineers, 7th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001. 672 p.

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