COUPLING MULTIPHASE PORE-SCALE MODELS TO ACCOUNT FOR BOUNDARY CONDITIONS: APPLICATION TO 2D QUASI-STATIC PORE NETWORKS

摘要

Accurate predictions of macroscopic multiphase flow properties (relative permeability and capillary pressure) are necessary for modeling flow and transport in subsurface applications, such as hydrocarbon recovery, carbon sequestration and nuclear waste storage. These properties are usually measured experimentally, but pore-scale network modeling has become an efficient alternative for understanding fundamental flow behavior and predicting macroscopic properties. In many cases, network modeling gives excellent agreement with experiment by using models physically representative of real media. Void space within a rock sample can be extracted from high resolution images and converted to a topologically equivalent network of pores and throats. Multiphase fluid transport is then modeled in the network and macroscopic properties extracted from the model. Advancements continue to be made in making multiphase network models (both qua-sistatic and dynamic) predictive, but one limitation is that arbitrary (e.g., constant pressure) boundary conditions are usually assumed; they do not reflect the local saturations and pressure distributions that are affected by flow and transport in the surrounding media. In this work we demonstrate that transport behavior at the pore scale, and therefore, upscaled macroscopic properties are directly affected by the boundary conditions. Pore-scale drainage in 2D quasi-static networks is modeled by direct coupling to other pore-network models so that the boundary conditions reflect local variations of transport behavior in the surrounding media. Phase saturations are coupled at model boundaries to ensure continuity between adjacent models. Macroscopic petrophysical properties are shown to be largely dependent upon the surrounding media, which are manifested in the form of boundary conditions. The predictive ability of network simulations is thus improved using the novel network coupling scheme.