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1st National Iranian Fractured Reservoirs Development Congress

Comparative Study of Different Techniques for


Numerical Reservoir Simulation
A.Bashiri , Kasiri Norollah

ABSTRACT
Many physical processes in nature, whose correct understanding, prediction, and control are
important to people, are described by Partial Differential Algebraic Equation (PDAE) systems
as a set of Partial Differential, Ordinary Differential and Algebraic Equations. Multiphase
flow in porous media, as one of such physical process, has been the interest of many scientific
researchers especially in the field of reservoir engineering. For most PDAEs it is not possible
to find their exact solutions analytically as mathematical function. Therefore the only way to
solve PDAEs arising in scientific problems is to approximate their solutions numerically and
as first step Partial (and Ordinary) Differential Equations of a given PDAE should be
discretized with suitable technique into a set of nonlinear (or linear) equations. Different
discretization techniques such as finite volume, finite element and finite difference applicable
to numerical analysis of PDAE system governing multiphase flow in porous media have been
reviewed and compared in this paper by using several case studies.
KEYWORDS:
PDAE, Fractured Reservoir, Finite Volume, Finite Element, Simulation, Finite Difference

1. INTRODUCTION

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Reservoir simulators were first built as diagnostic tools for understanding reservoirs that
surprised engineers or misbehaved after years of production. The earliest simulators were
physical models, such as sandboxes with clear glass sides for viewing fluid flow (Crick et al.,
1996). Today a simulator in reservoir engineering is defined as a given computer software
(code) that numerically solves governing equations for multiphase flow in a given oil or gas
reservoir. Within such simulator, the reservoir is represented by a series of interconnected
blocks, and the flow between blocks is solved numerically. A numerical simulator containing
the right information and in the hands of a skilled engineer can imitate the behavior of a
reservoir. Such simulator can predict production of given oil or gas reservoir under current
operating conditions, or the reaction of the reservoir to changes in conditions, such as
increasing production rate; production from more or different wells and response to injection
of water, steam or miscible gas. Referring to Figure1 is can be seen that reservoir simulation
is an essential step for reservoir management to get maximum attainable profit & recovery
from a given reservoir. Governing equations for multiphase flow in porous media are
basically a Partial Differential Algebraic Equation (PDAE) system that consists of Partial
Differential Equations (PDEs), Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs) and (Nonlinear)
Algebraic Equations (AEs) that should be solved simultaneously with suitable numerical
method. Existing numerical method have been compared in this paper based on several case
studies.

Figure1: Different steps for Reservoir Simulation [Crick, 1996]

2. MATHEMATICAL MODELING OF MULTIPHASE FLOW IN POROUS MEDIA

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Multiphase flow in petroleum reservoirs involves the simultaneous flow of, at most, three
phase (oil, water, and gas) transporting multiple fluid components and its mathematical
description can be obtained from conventional equations describing reservoir fluid behavior,
such as the continuity equation, the equation of flow and the equation of state. The continuity
equation for single phase flow can be written as follow:

For most reservoirs, the equation of flow is Darcys law which is valid for laminar flow at low
Reynolds numbers and its mathematical expression as follow. For high rates of flow, such as
in gas reservoirs, Darcys law equations are modified to include turbulence terms.

The equation of state (EOS) describes the pressure-volume or pressure-density relationship of


the various fluids present in a given reservoir with following general formulation for Cubic
Equation of State:

When three immiscible fluids flow simultaneously through a porous medium the permeability
of the rock to each flowing phase depends on the interfacial tensions between the fluids and
the contact angles between the rocks and the fluids. For commonly encountered conditions the
permeability of the rock to each phase is independent of bulk fluid properties and of flow rate
(for laminar flow), and is a function of the fluid saturation only (Fluid saturation of a
particular fluid is the fraction of the pore space in a given section of porous media that is
occupied by that fluid):

Also because of surface tension and the curvature of the interfaces between the two fluids
within the small pores, the pressure in the non-wetting fluid is higher that the pressure in the
wetting phase and the difference between these two pressures is the capillary pressure, Pc:

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For each phase, the three equations (Continuity Equation, the equation of flow and the
equation of state) can be treated as a set of PDAE. In numerical analysis of PDAE related to
multiphase flow in porous media the reservoir volume is treated as a numbered collection of
blocks and the reservoir production period is divided into a number of time steps.
Finally it should be noted that there are basically three types of second order PDEs, parabolic,
elliptic, and hyperbolic and it is required to distinguish among these types, since the
numerical methods for their solution need to be considered separately (Peaceman, 1983). A
PDE equation with variable coefficient can belong to one classification in one domain and
another classification in another domain. Smoothness of solutions is interestingly affected by
equation type: elliptic equations produce solutions that are smooth (up to the smoothness of
coefficients) even if boundary values aren't, parabolic equations will cause the smoothness of
solutions to increase along the low order variable, and hyperbolic equations preserve lack of
smoothness. Because of the superficial resemblance of equation (1) to heat conduction
equation, one might expect formulation of two phase flow in porous media to be essentially
parabolic in nature which is not necessarily true. It can be easily shown that final formulation
of equation (1) as pressure differential equation for compressible flow is practically elliptic or
nearly elliptic in nature (Ertekin et al, 2001).
NUMERICAL RESERVOIR SIMULATION:
In solving PDAE as governing equation for multiphase flow in porous media, the primary
challenge is to create a set of equations that approximate the original governing equations
(Mathematical Model) which are numerically stable, meaning that errors in the input data and
intermediate calculations do not accumulate and cause the resulting output to be meaningless.
There are many ways of doing this, all with advantages and disadvantages. Generally
speaking, as first step for numerical analysis of a PDAE system, Partial (and Ordinary)
Differential Equations should be discretized with suitable technique into a set of nonlinear (or
linear) equations. The three classical choices for such discretization are the finite difference
method (FDM), the finite element method (FEM) and the finite volume method (FVM).
These techniques have been compared in following sections.
FINITE DIFFERENCE METHOD:
The FDM is the oldest and is based on the application of a local Taylor expansion to
approximate the differential equations. The FDM uses a topologically square network of lines
to construct the discretization of the PDE. Most commercial models use the first order form of
the approximation of derivatives. As a result, state variables such as saturation and
composition are computed to be constant in a computational grid cell. Pressure is calculated at
a fixed point such as the grid cell center or as an average cell pressure. There are a few
inherent advantages of the finite difference method including (Firoozabadi, 2007):
a. Simplicity of application
b. Ease of extension from 1D to 2D and 3D
c. Compatibility with certain aspects of physics of two and three phase flow in porous media
Disadvantage of finite difference method are as follow:
a. Numerical Dispersion (Jessen 2002): the truncation error associated with the use of the
various difference equations discussed above has therefore been described by the term of
numerical diffusion.
b. Grid Dependency: one of the most significant shortcoming of conventional five point finite
difference reservoir simulators is they produce a different result when the grid orientation
is changed (diagonal versus parallel). It is reported that grid orientation can cause
variations in predicted recovery of more than 22% for miscible floods (Kazemi, 1996)

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c. Inaccuracy in flux Calculation in Heterogeneous Media with Capillary Pressure Contrast
d. It is difficult to adopt it for unstructured gridding

Figure2: Grid Orientation Effect in Finite Difference Formulation

Some modified finite difference formulations have been proposed to overcome drawback of
this formulation to approximate multiphase flow in oil and gas reservoirs. For example Guo
and Wang (2005) proposed higher order of Taylor approximation for discretization of
governing PDE equation for fluid flow in porous media. Their proposal has considerable
effect in decrease of numerical dispersion however such modification can increase
computation time for reservoir simulation considerably. As another modification Yanosik et
al. (1972) proposed Nine Point Finite Difference Formulation which was further completed
by Kazemi et al. (1991) as split operator scheme:

Figure3: Conventional Five Point v.s. Nine Point Formulation for Finite Difference Method

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The difference between the Yanosik and McCracken scheme and the Split operator scheme is
the formulation of the pressure equation. In the split operator scheme the pressure in the (i,j)
grid block is tied to four north-south, east-west grid block pressures at present time level and
to four diagonal grid block pressure at the oil time level. However in Yanosik scheme, all nine
pressure points should be at the present time level (Kazemi, 1991). The Split Operator scheme
(Kazemi, 1991) was tested again for same reservoir and fluid data as used by Yanosik and
McCracken (1972) by using MATLAB. Figure4 shows the S w =0.4 contours (fronts) for
M=50 for a Water flooding [The mobility of a fluid is the effective relative permeability of
that fluid divided by its viscosity. For an injection scheme, the mobility ratio, M, is the ratio
of the mobility of the displacing fluid behind the flood front to that of the displaced fluid
ahead of the flood front]. Refer to Figure4 both conventional five-point and split operator
schemes exhibit grid orientation effects. The five point scheme yields a large difference
between the diagonal and the parallel grid saturation contours. However the diagonal and the
parallel grid fronts are closer together for the split operator scheme than for the conventional
five-point scheme.
R

Figure4: Saturation Contours at Sw=0.4 for the five point and split operator
Scheme in a water flooding problem

As another modification to conventional finite difference methods for reservoir simulation,


Rosenberg (1982) proposed local mesh refinement to improve accuracy of FDM and tested
his method with a simple segment of a given reservoir that has analytical solution. Reported
problem and Local Mesh Refinement proposal in Rosenberg paper (1982) have been tested by
using MATLAB. Figure5 show results of this simulation which is consistent with reported
results in original paper:

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Figure6: Relative Error in compare to Analytical Solution due to local mesh refinement

2.1. FINITE VOLUME METHOD


The finite volume method is a numerical method for solving PDEs that calculates the values
of the conserved variables averaged across the volume. One advantage of the finite volume
method over finite difference methods is that it does not require a structured mesh (although a
structured mesh can also be used). Furthermore, the finite volume method is preferable to
other methods as a result of the fact that boundary conditions can be applied noninvasively.
This is true because the values of the conserved variables are located within the volume
element, and not at nodes or surfaces. As an example a general hyperbolic problem can be
represented with following PDE:

Here, u represents a vector of states and f represents the corresponding flux vector. In finite
volume method spatial domain can be sub-divided into finite volumes or cells with following
volume integral for cell i with volume v i :
R

On integrating the first term to get the volume average and applying the divergence theorem
to the second, this yields:

It now remains to approximate the flux integral which can be achieved using suitable
numerical integration technique which depends on problem geometry and mesh construction.
Integrated form of FVM is very useful for unstructured gridding in reservoir simulation. It
should be remembered that grids (divider of each zone into finite number of cell or control
volume) can be classified as Structured or Unstructured: A Structured Grid uses a topology in
which the cells are arranged in an array structure. Location of neighboring cells is implicit in
the array indices (i,j,k). This allows efficient storage and book-keeping of cell information.

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An Unstructured Grid has no inherent ordering of the cells, and so, the arrangement of cells
must be specified explicitly. Unstructured grids allow greater flexibility in generating and
adapting grids at the expense of greater storage of cell information. A Hybrid Grid contains
both structured and unstructured grids, usually in separate zones.
In case of rectangular and structured grids finite volume formulation will be identical to finite
difference formulation (CVFD: Control Volume Finite Difference Formulation). As
alternative and usually for unstructured grids, flux integral can be approximated with finite
element method. This kind of PDE numerical analysis is known in literature as Control
Volume Finite Element Method (CVFEM) (Trujillo et al., 1997). In case of rectangular and
structured grids (and to a lesser extent for unstructured grids) issues of numerical dispersion,
grid orientation and flux calculation can still be serious for complex problems such as
fractured reservoirs. Figure8 compares predicted results of CVFE method for problem
introduced in 8th SPE Comparative study (Quandalle, 1993) with conventional FD (Five and
Nine Point) (Robert & Fernand, 1994).
P

Triangular Finite Element

Control Volume

Figure7: Control volume in Triangular finite element mesh for FVFE Formulation

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Figure8: GOR Production v.s. Time (SPE 8th Comparative Study)


It is clear that error due to grid orientation is negligible for CVFE in this case (both CVFE
arrangements converged to similar solution). Refer to above mentioned items it can be said
that from mathematical and numerical point of view, CVFE has several advantages over
CVFD for use in reservoir simulation. From commercial CFD Codes Fluent (ANSYS Inc.)
uses finite volume formation to model physical phenomena such as fluid flow in porous
media. Also ANSYS CFX uses a hybrid finite element/ finite volume approach.
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2.2. FINITE ELEMENT APPROACH


The basic concept for Finite Element is that method such as finite difference is an
approximation to the PDE while the finite element method is an approximation to PDEs
solution. As an example in FE method, consider the problem of finding u(x,y) that the
following PDE is satisfied with some suitable boundary conditions:

Where is a two dimensional domain with boundary . In the finite element method the
overall domain of the problem is divided into a set of sub domains called finite element. Any
geometric shape for which the approximation functions can be derived uniquely qualifies as
an element:

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Figure9: Example of Finite Element Discretization of a domain

In FE approximation the problem domain is divided into a set of sub-domains called finite
element. Any geometric shape for which the approximation functions can be derived uniquely
qualifies as an element. Then solution of equation (9) is approximated over a typical finite
element by following expression:

Where
parameter

represents an approximation of
denote the values of the function

called element nodes and

over the given finite element,


at a selected number of points,

are the Lagrange interpolation function associated with the

element. It is very simple demonstration for FE method and further discussion about it can be
found other manuscripts.
Finite Element has some powerful features, provided attention is paid to the physics of
multiphase flow in porous media. In this method, the unknown variables, such as saturation or
concentration are approximated by using known test functions, which can be linear or higher
order polynomial expansion in terms of unknown variables at the geometric locations (nodes)
when the finite element shapes are defined. As a result, variables such as saturation can vary
within a given cell or element, which results in low numerical dispersion. The finite element
method is also flexible for unstructured gridding.
Drawback of finite element method, or finite difference and finite volume with higher order
approximations, include unphysical oscillations that require post processing after each time
step, by methods such as the slope limiters (Firoozabadi, 2007). Another drawback may relate
to the need for close attention to the physics of multiphase flow. For example, if one uses the
continuous Galerkin method, a problem may arise because it does not allow for discontinuous
saturation at the nodes. As a result, the continuous Galerkin method does not fit the two phase
flow in heterogeneous media with capillary heterogeneity. The discontinuous Galerkin
method, on the other hand, removes the deficiency and provides an accurate solution because
it also allows for sharp changes in saturation.
In order to find major difference between multiscale and standard finite element for PDE
discretization in numerical reservoir simulation remember fine and coarse grid models in
reservoir characterization. The fine grid model is employed to geologically characterize a
reservoir that should be up-scaled into coarse model for prediction of reservoir performance
due to computational costs for the finer grids. There are some Upscaling techniques that have

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been compared with each other in 10th SPE Comparative Study (Blunt & Christie, 2001) as
one of uncertainties associated with reservoir performance simulation. Multiscale methods for
reservoir simulation have been introduced as an alternative to standard up-scaling as a tool for
more fully incorporating fine-scale features at low computational cost (Durlofsky, 2007).
It should be noted that FE method has some big differences with Spectral methods where
solution of PDE is approximated by means of truncated Fourier series or series of Chebyshev
polynomials. Unlike the FD or FE in Spectral methods the approximations for solution are not
local but valid throughout the entire computational domain.
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2.3. CONSERVATION ELEMENT/SOLUTION ELEMENT (CE/SE) METHOD


Researchers developed a new numerical framework for solving conservation laws in
continuum mechanics, namely, the Space-Time Conservation Element and Solution Element
Method, or the CE/SE method for short. This method has been built from fundamentals, and
not as a modification of any previously existing method. This method has many advantages
that make it suitable as alternative for numerical analysis of multiphase flow in porous media
(Chang, 2004)
3. COMPARISON OF DIFFERENT NUMERICAL SCHEMES
This work has initially presented a brief review of the most used numerical methods for the
solution of partial differential equations, aiming their application in the petroleum reservoir
simulation area. Also It is important to stress that it is not possible to show which of
numerical methods such FD, FV, FE or CVFE is the best, since there is no method able to
solve with the highest accuracy and flexibility all the physical situations in practical problems.
Without any general conclusion it can be said that a good understanding of the numerical
solution algorithm is very crucial. Also three mathematical concepts are useful in determining
the success or otherwise of numerical different methods: convergence, consistency and
stability. Convergence is the property of a numerical method to produce a solution which
approaches the exact solution as the grid spacing, control volume size or element size is
reduced to zero. Consistent numerical schemes produce systems of algebraic equations which
can be demonstrated to be equivalent to the original governing equation as the grid spacing
tends to zero. Stability is associated with damping of errors as the numerical method
proceeds. If a technique is not stable even round-off errors in the initial data can cause wild
oscillations or divergence.
4. Nomenclature

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5. REFERENCES:
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