A Streamtube Approach for Modeling Mass and Heat Migration for Thermal Recovery Methods

摘要

This paper presents a new reservoir simulator for mass and heat migration based on the streamtube technique. The current version of the program focuses on characterizing migration of the injected fluid. The method is heavily based on the distribution of the pore volume along each streamtube calculated by using the Time-of-Flight method. This information and the 1D solution of mass and energy equations are used to determine thermal migration as well as temperature changes at production wells. The streamtubes are derived from an underlying velocity field, which is obtained from the solution of the pressure equation under the assumption of incompressibility. The compressibility effects are accounted for in the 1D solutions along periodically changing streamtubes. Simulations are carried out for a five-spot well pattern in 2D areal domains with various types of heterogeneity under different injection scenarios. We confirmed that the results from the streamtube approach had a reasonable balance between its ability to provide an insight into the behavior of mass and heat flow and the computational efficiency. Comparisons with a commercially available simulator both validated the method and illustrated the cases in which this method is more useful to reservoir engineers.