Multi-Scale Fluid Flow in DYNamically FRACtured Porous Reservoir
Summary
The unconventional recovery processes of oil and gas reservoirs raise
significant
costs and risks to the surrounding environment (including contamination
of
ground water, risks to air quality etc.) around the world and threatens
to pose
greater challenges in the future to meet the rising energy demand. The
oil-gas
industry is meeting this threat with developing diverse technologies
that work by
different mechanisms but share a common goal: to reduce risks for the
surrounding environment and to increase the recovery factor of
reservoirs.
The aim of this project would be to develop a new fully coupled
framework as an
extension of research INTERSECT simulator in which we can model dynamic
crack propagation with the injection of high velocity fluid flow as
observed in the
hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") of unconventional reservoirs.
INTERSECT is the next generation simulator for high performance
computing for
oil industry developed at Schlumberger. Schlumberger is the world.s
leading
supplier of technology, integrated project management and information
solutions
to customers working in the oil and gas industry worldwide. Employing
approximately 123,000 people representing over 140 nationalities and
working in
more than 85 countries, Schlumberger provides the industry.s widest
range of
products and services from exploration through production. The current
commercial INTERSECT code have obvious limitations in the modelling of
multiscale
fluid flow in dynamically fractured reservoirs.
Current frameworks on crack origination and propagation in high velocity
fluid
flow regimes are very limited in terms of physical and geometrical
description of
the phenomena. In the current workflows there are typically very simple
assumptions on the geometry of the crack, the criteria for the crack
origination,
dynamics of the crack propagation and fluid flow inside the crack. In
addition the
workflows require the sequential usage of different simulation tools
which are
loosely coupled. Clearly this is an inefficient workflow and can lead to
incorrect
physical description of the phenomena.
We propose to implement a meshless discretization scheme to solve the
underlying governing partial differential equations (PDEs) which will be
formulated using the fundamental principles of irreversible
thermodynamics. The
meshless discretization scheme has been extensively used to simulate
crack
origination and propagation in solid mechanics. In addition it has been
used to
simulate fluid mechanics. It has no complexity with respect to mesh
generation/adaptation, handling different meshes, and reconstruction of
meshes
both for solid and fluid mechanics. The conventional mesh dependent
simulator
would require reconstruction of the mesh and a variable transformation
between
meshes in a case of modelling dynamic cracks propagation. Clearly, this
is
computational intensive and less accurate.
The new framework would be implemented in INTERSECT in order to take the
advantage of the existing framework and field management functionality.
One
application of this development would be hydraulic fracturing of shale
gas layers.
This new framework will allow for more physical simulation of crack
origination
and propagation which will give more reliable estimates on the
environmental
impact of shale gas exploration.
This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon
2020 research
and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant
agreement No. 642987.
Contact information:
Kees
Vuik
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