Application of Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics for Modeling of Multiphase Fluid Flow in Non-Uniform Porous Media

Abstract

Multiphase flow modeling through porous media, especially in the oil and gas industry, involves numerically solving differential equations. Several phenomena such as chemical, physical, mechanical, and geological must be considered to solve these equations, and there is no analytical solution for this method. The characterization of these phenomena is possible through laboratory experiments that cannot cover a wide range of parameters and operational conditions. In this study, we investigated the practical use of the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method for modeling the multiphase flow through the porous media with complex and random geometry. The primary purpose of this study is to investigate the possibility of using SPH as a complementary method alongside laboratory studies. First, characterization of the single-phase flow was performed, and the essential macroscopic parameters like absolute permeability tensor and tortuosity were extracted. Then, the two-phase flow modeling through porous media was studied. These studies show that the practical parameters such as local saturation changes, fluid displacement, flow hysteresis, breakthrough time, average flow velocity, relative permeability curve, Buckley−Leverett theory, capillary desaturation curve, and recovery factor could be obtained. Finally, the sensitivity analysis of the multiphase flow through the non-uniform porous media was done. For this purpose, the effect of three parameters (geometry of the porous medium, viscosity ratio, and wettability) on multiphase flow through the porous medium was investigated. It was shown that wettability is the most influential parameter in light-phase recovery. At the next level, the geometry of the porous medium shows the most significant effect on the production rate, and the lowest effect was related to the viscosity ratio. The results of this study show that the SPH method can provide a suitable view to the reservoir engineers to predict the multiphase flow behavior through the porous media.