Imaging and image-based fluid transport modeling at the pore scale in geological materials: A practical introduction to the current state-of-the-art

Bultreys, Tom; Boever, Wesley De; Cnudde, Veerle

doi:10.1016/j.earscirev.2016.02.001

Cited by 382 publications

(245 citation statements)

References 334 publications

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“…Due to recent innovations in microcomputed tomography (micro-CT), it is now possible to image a rock's pore-scale fluid distribution during flow experiments; see, e.g., reviews in Refs. [20][21][22]. This provides a much richer data set with which to validate and calibrate models, and it addresses the third type of uncertainty as the experiments are at the same scale as the models.…”

Section: Published By the American Physical Society Under The Terms Omentioning

confidence: 99%

Validation of model predictions of pore-scale fluid distributions during two-phase flow

et al. 2018

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Pore-scale two-phase flow modeling is an important technology to study a rock's relative permeability behavior. To investigate if these models are predictive, the calculated pore-scale fluid distributions which determine the relative permeability need to be validated. In this work, we introduce a methodology to quantitatively compare models to experimental fluid distributions in flow experiments visualized with microcomputed tomography. First, we analyzed five repeated drainage-imbibition experiments on a single sample. In these experiments, the exact fluid distributions were not fully repeatable on a pore-by-pore basis, while the global properties of the fluid distribution were. Then two fractional flow experiments were used to validate a quasistatic pore network model. The model correctly predicted the fluid present in more than 75% of pores and throats in drainage and imbibition. To quantify what this means for the relevant global properties of the fluid distribution, we compare the main flow paths and the connectivity across the different pore sizes in the modeled and experimental fluid distributions. These essential topology characteristics matched well for drainage simulations, but not for imbibition. This suggests that the pore-filling rules in the network model we used need to be improved to make reliable predictions of imbibition. The presented analysis illustrates the potential of our methodology to systematically and robustly test two-phase flow models to aid in model development and calibration.

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Section: Published By the American Physical Society Under The Terms Omentioning

confidence: 99%

Validation of model predictions of pore-scale fluid distributions during two-phase flow

et al. 2018

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“…The main limitation lies in the high cost to deal with high resolution rock structures [20,21]. As high resolution images can capture the structure details, researchers are keen on obtaining higher resolution images [22][23][24].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…What is more, it takes much longer time to prepare the sample and scan its structures when resolution gets higher, which weakens fast analysis performance. Even if high resolution images are well acquired, it might still be a challenge to process such large datasets and perform simulations through it [20], which demands usage of high performance clusters of central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Critical Resolution and Sample Size of Digital Rock Analysis for Unconventional Reservoirs

Liu

Wang

2018

Energies

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Digital rock analysis (DRA) has exhibited strong ability and significant potential to help people to image geological microstructures and understand transport mechanisms in rocks underground, especially for unconventional reservoirs like tight sandstone and shale. More and more new technologies have been developed for higher resolutions, which always come with higher expense. However, the balance between cost (money and time) and benefit has never been figured out quantitatively for these studies. As the cost and benefit are directly related to image resolution and size, this work is focusing on whether there is a critical resolution and sample size when using DRA for accurate enough predictions of rock properties. By numerically changing the digital resolutions of the reconstructed structures from high-resolution micro-computed tomography (CT) scanned tight rock samples, it is found that the permeability predictions get stable when the resolution is higher than a cut-off resolution (COR). Different from physical rocks, the representative element volume (REV) of a digital rock is influenced by the digital resolution. The results of pore-scale modeling indicate that once sample size is larger than the critical sample size and the scan resolution higher than the critical resolution for a given rock, the predicted rock properties by DRA are accurate and representative.

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“…To this end, recent advances in pore-scale imaging-based characterization methods (see review [26]) that enable the fast visualization of two-phase flow at pore-scale resolution, most notably microscopy imaging of thin micromodels [18,[27][28][29], X-ray computed tomography [30][31][32][33][34], and confocal microscopy [35,36], have provided valuable insights into 2 Geofluids the interplay of viscous, capillary, gravitational, and inertial forces constituting the complexity of interface dynamics at the pore-scale. For instance, free-energy driven Haines jumps have been confirmed as dominant displacement mechanism for flow at small capillary numbers [29,32].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Clearly, these observations deviate from the assumptions underlying generalized Darcy flow. Besides experimental approaches, we consider direct numerical simulations (DNS) to be an important complementary tool for quantitative characterization of multiphase flow in porous media [26,37].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fluid Interfaces during Viscous-Dominated Primary Drainage in 2D Micromodels Using Pore-Scale SPH Simulations

Sivanesapillai

Steeb

2018

Geofluids

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We perform pore-scale resolved direct numerical simulations of immiscible two-phase flow in porous media to study the evolution of fluid interfaces. Using a Smoothed-Particle Hydrodynamics approach, we simulate saturation-controlled primary drainage in heterogeneous, partially wettable 2D porous microstructures. While imaging the evolution of fluid interfaces near capillary equilibrium becomes more feasible as fast X-ray tomography techniques mature, imaging methods with suitable temporal resolution for viscous-dominated flow have only recently emerged. In this work, we study viscous fingering and stable displacement processes. During viscous fingering, pore-scale flow fields are reminiscent of Bretherton annular flow, that is, the less viscous phase percolates through the core of a pore-throat forming a hydrodynamic wetting film. Even in simple microstructures wetting films have major impact on the evolution of fluid interfacial area and are observed to give rise to nonnegligible interfacial viscous coupling. Although macroscopically appearing flat, saturation fronts during stable displacement extend over the length of the capillary dispersion zone. While far from the dispersion zone fluid permeation obeys Darcy's law, the interplay of viscous and capillary forces is found to render fluid flow within complex. Here we show that the characteristic length scale of the capillary dispersion zone increases with the heterogeneity of the microstructure.

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Imaging and image-based fluid transport modeling at the pore scale in geological materials: A practical introduction to the current state-of-the-art

Cited by 382 publications

References 334 publications

Validation of model predictions of pore-scale fluid distributions during two-phase flow

Validation of model predictions of pore-scale fluid distributions during two-phase flow

Critical Resolution and Sample Size of Digital Rock Analysis for Unconventional Reservoirs

Fluid Interfaces during Viscous-Dominated Primary Drainage in 2D Micromodels Using Pore-Scale SPH Simulations

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