Studying the CO2–CH4 displacement
process is of great importance to understand the CO2-enhanced
shale gas recovery technology. However, most studies have focused
on the gas behavior in the reservoir during the dominant stage of
competitive adsorption after CO2 injection, as well as
the shale gas recovery, displacement efficiency, and gas separation
after displacement, while less attention has been paid to the gas
behavior during the initial period of displacement. A CO2–CH4 displacement model that can provide a continuous
pressure gradient in the displacement direction and a stable back-pressure
at the pore outlet was developed based on a heterogeneous surface
pore. The model was divided into three areas: CO2 injection
area, pore area, and back-pressure area. Molecular dynamics simulations
were used to study the effects of depressurization exploitation and
injection pressure on the displacement behavior at the initial period
of the displacement process under different reservoir conditions.
It was found that the displacement process always starts from the
CH4 reverse flow stage and then experiences the injection
pressure action stage and positive displacement stage in sequence.
Moreover, the extent of CH4 reverse flow directly affects
the system development process and the final displacement efficiency.
A small system presorption pressure and a large injection pressure
are beneficial to the displacement. It is believed that the reservoir
pressure should be dropped to the lowest possible level during depressurization
exploitation, and the CO2 injection pressure needs to be
selected by considering displacement efficiency, reservoir safety,
and economic cost. The CO2 occupies the adsorption sites
near graphene faster than that near montmorillonite (MMT) in the
direction of displacement, while the CH4 desorption is
faster near MMT. Therefore, it cannot be concluded that the displacement
process near graphene is ahead of MMT. It is considered that the gas
desorption/adsorption behavior near the graphene dominates the displacement
process in terms of gas amount, while the fluctuation near MMT with
time and injection pressure directly affects the gas adsorption variation
in the pore space from the trend.