Welcome! We (Gabriela and Danielle) are starting to share about our SELMA project with the oil and gas and programming community. We have been working on SELMA since 2017 at our Master’s Degree until today in our Ph.D. We believe we have insights, learnings, knowledge, and experience that are worthful to be shared. We will release weekly articles here at LinkedIn, starting from today by giving an overview of SELMA. We hope you all can take the best from our posts.
SELMA is a steady-state multiphase flow software all coded in python language. The name has a dual meaning, first, it is from the Portuguese acronym “Simulador de ELevação e Escoamento Multifásico”. Secondly, it also refers to the female name SELMA, which represents us, two women developing software in the oil and gas environment. Not usual, right?
SELMA simulates the oil production as a multiphase flow (oil followed by gas and water) from the bottom hole to the production unit, passing through the wellhead, flowline, riser, and production chokes. Black oil model represents the fluid, and its properties are updated for each thermodynamic state along the flow. The simulations are performed using the March Algorithm for pipe segments, updating the fluid, evaluating the thermal exchange, and the pressure drop. SELMA has the most used correlations in the literature to represent the fluid model and its properties.
Considering pressure drop models, the variety is also present, including empirical and mechanistic correlations. The pressure drop simulation can also be used to backpressure calculation. SELMA has nodal analysis, tubing performance relationship (TPR), known as vertical lift curves, and gas lift performance curves.
Throughout our research journey, we developed tools using SELMA to support the production engineers’ decision-making process. These tools are part of what we named as SELMA-PMOT -Production and Management Optimization Tool. SELMA-PMOT englobes the following tools: Database Building, Multiphase Flow Simulator Tuning, Gas Lift Optimization, and Virtual Flow Metering.
Cheers,
Gabriela and Danielle.
SELMA 