Comparison between Laboratory Experiments and Detailed Simulations of Unstable Miscible Displacement Influenced by Gravity

Christie, Michael; Jones, Alistair; Muggeridge, Ann

doi:10.1007/978-94-009-0791-1_20

Cited by 63 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…More complex behavior that cannot be predicted by linear stability analysis, such as fingertip-splitting, finger-finger interactions, permeability heterogeneity, and overall displacement efficiency have been effectively described and studied with numerical simulation (Christie, 1987;Meiburg and Homsy, 1988;Tan and Homsy, 1988;Brock and Orr, 1991;Tchelepi et al, 1993). These numerical models have been compared to experimental results and have been found to represent such data relatively well (Christie et al, 1990). These efforts have produced a rich picture of the complex interplay of microscopic processes and macroscopic forces responsible for viscous fingering dynamics.…”

Section: Aiche Journalmentioning

confidence: 95%

Chemical imaging of multicomponent viscous fingering in chromatography

1997

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Section: Aiche Journalmentioning

confidence: 95%

Chemical imaging of multicomponent viscous fingering in chromatography

1997

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“…The method was validated by comparing predictions against the experimental data of Blackwell et al (1959). Subsequent works (Christie and Jones, 1987;Christie et al 1989;Davies et al 1991;Muggeridge et al, 2002) have shown this approach can successfully predict first contact miscible fingering patterns, solvent production and oil recovery obtained from physical experiments performed under a range of conditions, with and without gravity, and including well-characterized heterogeneities. Araktingi and Orr (1990) developed a particle-tracking simulator to study the combined effects of permeability heterogeneity, flow rate and mobility ratio on miscible viscous fingering.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adaptive Mesh Optimization for Simulation of Immiscible Viscous Fingering

et al. 2016

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Viscous fingering can be a major concern when waterflooding heavy oil reservoirs. Most commercial reservoir simulators employ low-order finite volume/difference methods on structured grids to resolve this phenomenon. However, this approach suffers from a significant numerical dispersion error due to insufficient mesh resolution which smears out some important features of the flow. We simulate immiscible incompressible two-phase displacements and propose the use of unstructured control volume finite element (CVFE) methods for capturing viscous fingering in porous media. Our approach uses anisotropic mesh adaptation where the mesh resolution is optimized based on the evolving features of flow. The adaptive algorithm uses a metric tensor field based on solution interpolation error estimates to locally control the size and shape of elements in the metric. The mesh optimization generates an unstructured finer mesh in areas of the domain where flow properties change more quickly and a coarser mesh in other regions where properties do not vary so rapidly. We analyze the computational cost of mesh adaptivity on unstructured mesh and compare its results with those obtained by a commercial reservoir simulator based on the finite volume methods.

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“…This result implies that the injected CO 2 would override the resident oil, creating a tongue. In contrast with the uncertainty involved in the simulation of viscous fingering such as number of fingers and different behavior of each finger [42], formation of a gravitational tongue would mainly depend on the thickness of a single tongue and speed of its advancement. In other words, when the displacement is controlled by a sharp finger, 2D representation of the core would adequately capture the displacement patterns.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, for this fundamental study, the effect of numerical dispersion should be minimized to obtain a representative set of relative permeability. To sensitize the impact of grid size, two systematic sensitivity analyses were carried out: (i) grid size in normal direction of injection and (ii) grid size aspect ratio, i.e., ∆x ∆z The importance of gridding aspect ratio has been highlighted where, for identical aspect ratios, the oil recovery for certain pore volume injected (PVinj) would follow a linear trend [42]. It can be postulated that as the grid size decreases at fixed aspect ratio, the oil recovery at breakthrough would exhibit a decreasing trend.…”

Section: Secondary Co 2 Injection Experiments (Co 2 /Oil Relative Permmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Improved Approach to Estimate Three-Phase Relative Permeability Functions for Heavy-Oil Displacement Involving Instability and Compositional Effects

et al. 2017

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Simultaneous three-phase flow of gas, oil and water is a common phenomenon in enhanced oil recovery techniques such as water-alternating-gas (WAG) injection. Reliable reservoir simulations are required to predict the performance of these injections before field application. However, heavy oil displacement by gas or water can lead to viscous fingering due to the unfavorable mobility ratio between heavy oil and the displacing fluid. In addition, the injection of partially dissolvable gases such as CO 2 can result in compositional effects, which can bring about a significant reduction of oil viscosity and hence can cause variations of the mobility ratio. Estimations of three-phase relative permeability under such conditions are extremely complex, and using conventional techniques for the estimation can lead to erroneous results. We used the results of four coreflood experiments, carried out on a core, to estimate two-phase and three-phase relative permeability. A new history matching methodology for laboratory experiments was used that takes into account the instability and the compositional effects in the estimation processes. The results demonstrate that a simultaneous CO 2 and water injection (CO 2 -simultaneous water and gas (SWAG)) can be adequately matched using the relative permeabilities of a secondary gas/liquid and a tertiary oil/water. In heavy oil WAG injection, the injected water follows the CO 2 path due its lower resistance as a result of the CO 2 dissolution in the oil and the resultant reduction of the oil viscosity. This is contrary to WAG injection in conventional oils, where gas and water open up separate saturations paths. It is also important to include capillary pressure (Pc), even in high permeable porous media, as we observed that the inclusion of capillary pressure dampened the propagation of the viscous fingers and hence helped the front to become stabilized, leading to a more realistic simulated sweep efficiency.

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Comparison between Laboratory Experiments and Detailed Simulations of Unstable Miscible Displacement Influenced by Gravity

Cited by 63 publications

References 5 publications

Chemical imaging of multicomponent viscous fingering in chromatography

Chemical imaging of multicomponent viscous fingering in chromatography

Adaptive Mesh Optimization for Simulation of Immiscible Viscous Fingering

An Improved Approach to Estimate Three-Phase Relative Permeability Functions for Heavy-Oil Displacement Involving Instability and Compositional Effects

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