Venturi-assisted liquid removal from the sump of a gas well

Gas wells produce not only gas, but also a small amount of liquid which, being dense, can collect at the bottom of the well. The well may slowly fill with liquid, and gas production is reduced, or stopped completely, when the perforations through which gas flows into the well are submerged. A simple Venturi pump can be used to re-disperse the liquid into the gas flowing to the surface. The pressure available for lifting liquid into the Venturi throat is not large, and it is therefore advantageous if gas is mixed into the liquid, thereby reducing the effective density of the mixture which has to be lifted. An analysis based solely on Bernoulli’s equation and hydrostatic pressures is surprisingly rich, and gives good agreement with experiment when empirical relations for turbulent wall friction are included.