Modeling dynamic fracture growth induced by non-Newtonian polymer injection

Li, Zhitao; Luo, Haishan; Bhardwaj, Prateek; Wang, Bin; Delshad, Mojdeh

doi:10.1016/j.petrol.2016.09.001

Cited by 9 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 49 publications

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“…The mathematical simulation of such a system has been already analyzed by several authors [14][15][16][17][18]. This has led to the development of commercial and academic simulators, namely: UTCHEM and IPARS (University of Texas at Austin) [19], MRST (open code for MATLAB) [20][21][22], CMG (Stars), Petrel and Eclipse (Schlumberger), and also others simulators found in the literature [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32]. In addition to the physical phenomena, some problems of numerical source have been studied when the mass conservation equation was discretized.…”

Section: Previous Numerical Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Numerical Modeling and Validation of a Novel 2D Compositional Flooding Simulator Using a Second-Order TVD Scheme

Druetta¹,

Picchioni²

2018

Energies

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The aim of this paper is to present the latter and develop a numerical simulator aimed at solving a 2D domain porous medium, using the compositional approach to simulate chemical flooding processes. The simulator consists in a two-phase, multicomponent system solved by the IMplicit in Pressure, Explicit in Concentration (IMPEC) approach, which can be operated under an iterative/non-iterative condition on each time-step. The discretization of the differential equations is done using a fully second order of accuracy, along with a Total Variation Diminishing (TVD) scheme with a flux limiter function. This allowed reducing the artificial diffusion and dispersion on the transport equation, improving the chemical species front tracking, decreasing the numerical influence on the recovery results. The new model was validated against both commercial and academic simulators and moreover, the robustness and stability were also tested, showing that the iterative IMPEC is fully stable, behaving as an implicit numerical scheme. The non-iterative IMPEC is conditionally stable, with a critical time-step above which numerical spurious oscillations begin to appear until the system numerically crashes. The results showed a good correspondence in different grid sizes, being largely affected by the time-step, with caused a decrease in the recovery efficiency in the iterative scheme, and the occurrence of numerical oscillations in the non-iterative one. Numerically speaking, the second-order scheme using a flux splitting TVD discretization proved to be a good approach for compositional reservoir simulation, decreasing the influence of numerical truncation errors on the results when compared to traditional, first-order linear schemes. Along with these studies, secondary recoveries in constant and random permeability fields are simulated before employing them in tertiary recovery processes.

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Section: Previous Numerical Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Numerical Modeling and Validation of a Novel 2D Compositional Flooding Simulator Using a Second-Order TVD Scheme

Druetta¹,

Picchioni²

2018

Energies

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Scaling up the interplay of fingering and channeling for unstable water/polymer floods in viscous-oil reservoirs

Luo

Delshad

Pope

et al. 2018

Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering

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Interactions Between Viscous Fingering and Channeling for Unstable Water/Polymer Floods in Heavy Oil Reservoirs

Luo

Delshad

Pope

et al. 2017

SPE Reservoir Simulation Conference

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Unstable floods and resulting viscous fingers remain a big challenge for reservoir simulation as the gridblock size is usually many orders larger than the viscous finger wavelength. This problem becomes especially pronounced with increasing applications of polymer and other chemical floods in the development of heavy oil reservoirs. Traditional reservoir simulators do not consider sub-grid viscous fingering effects and tend to overestimate the waterflood oil recovery. Using extremely fine grid models with centimeters size is unrealistic for field-scale simulations. While some researchers disregard viscous fingering by claiming that channeling dominates at the large scale for heterogeneous reservoirs, they miss the existence of viscous fingering at the small scale, which affects the displacement efficiency. To overcome this limitation, an effective-fingering model was developed to upscale fingering effects. The model divides each gridblock into three dynamic regions: two-phase flow, single phase oil flow, and bypassed-oil regions. Model parameters represent the maximum fraction of viscous fingering and the growth rates of different regions, which are used to modify flow functions. Model parameters from history match of a set of laboratory experiments show clear power-law correlations with a dimensionless viscous finger number, a function of viscosity ratio, velocity, permeability, interfacial tension, and core cross-sectional area. The correlation was achieved in the lab scale by considering homogeneous cores, and we extended it further to the field scale by performing high-order spatial accuracy numerical simulations at the intermediate scale using fine gridblock sizes roughly the same as that of the core. Geostatistical realizations of the permeability field were generated with various variances and correlation lengths. In a statistical way, we were able to quantify the viscous finger number valid for a gridblock at the field scale affected by various heterogeneities using the effective-fingering model. We also observed that channelized permeability distributions increase the viscous finger number drastically, showing the important role of channeling in such cases. This new model was applied to a field case with high heterogeneity undergoing water/polymer floods. We observed that the oil recovery was improved by the polymer slug because of the enhancement in both local displacement efficiency and sweep efficiency. In summary, we developed an upscaling model that provides a fresh-new insight on how to simulate unstable water/polymer floods at the field scale, which effectively accounts for the interplay of viscous fingering and channeling.

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Modeling dynamic fracture growth induced by non-Newtonian polymer injection

Cited by 9 publications

References 49 publications

Numerical Modeling and Validation of a Novel 2D Compositional Flooding Simulator Using a Second-Order TVD Scheme

Numerical Modeling and Validation of a Novel 2D Compositional Flooding Simulator Using a Second-Order TVD Scheme

Scaling up the interplay of fingering and channeling for unstable water/polymer floods in viscous-oil reservoirs

Interactions Between Viscous Fingering and Channeling for Unstable Water/Polymer Floods in Heavy Oil Reservoirs

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