THE PETROLEUM ENGINEERING LABORATORY

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1.????Introduction

The Department of Petroleum Engineering, KNUST, has six (6) Laboratories used for basic petroleum engineering experiments and research. These include:

1.????Core and Rock Properties Laboratory

2.????Drilling Fluids and Cementing Laboratory

3.????Drilling and Well Control Simulation Laboratory

4.????Reservoir Simulation Laboratory

5.????Fluid Properties Laboratory

6.????Research Laboratory

2.????Core and Rock Properties Laboratory

This laboratory deals with reservoir and petrophysical related analysis. The key areas are routine core and special core analysis measurements. Other areas include particle size analysis, core sample cutting to required sizes, sample drying, solvent extraction and core sample saturation.

3. Drilling Fluids and Cementing Laboratory

The Drilling Fluids and Cementing Laboratory has industry-standard equipment and procedures that are used in testing various properties of drilling fluids and oilfield cement slurries. The tests done here relate to the suitability of the fluids in performing key functions in the oil well drilling and cementing processes. Some of the tests that are run and their related equipment are tabulated below:

4. Drilling and Well Control Simulation Laboratory

The Drilling and Well Control Simulation Laboratory has a full-size Derrick Floor Drilling Simulator (DRILLSim 5000), which can be used to train individuals on the various operations that go on during oil-well drilling. The Simulator satisfies requirement for training in oil-well drilling operations such as Well Intervention, Pressure control, Coil Tubing, etc. certifiable by the International Well Control Forum (IWCF) and International Association of Drilling Contractors (IADC).?

5. Reservoir Simulation Laboratory

The Reservoir Simulation Laboratory houses 46 computers for training in oilfield related simulations, computer programming related to the oil and gas industry as well as basic computing. The Laboratory has a License Server that houses various licenses including the Schlumberger Suite (Petrel, Eclipse & OSM), Kappa Workstation and IP. The aim of this Laboratory is to train students and to build static geologic models and run dynamic reservoir simulations. It is therefore targeted towards final year students as well as the research students.

6. Fluid Properties Laboratory

The Fluid Properties Laboratory deals with the analysis of fluid characteristics. It also specializes in the sampling of fluid from the field for analysis.

7. Research Laboratory

The Research Laboratory has selected equipment from some of the aforementioned Laboratories for research purposes. This Laboratory is designated for postgraduate research and it is therefore not used by undergraduates.