Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Dongxiao Zhang
Mewbourne School of Petroleum and Geological Engineering, University of Oklahoma, Norman, USA
ABSTRACT: Our physical observations and theoretical treatments of flow and transport in fractured porous
media are usually associated with various length scales: pore- (microscopic), local- (macroscopic), fracture-,
and field (megascopic)-scales. Dominant processes and governing equations may vary with scales. Extending
from one scale to another requires upscaling (or downscaling). This allows the essence of physical processes at
one level to be attributed at a coarser (or finer) level. In this conference proceedings paper, we review some of
our recent work in modeling flow and transport in fractured porous media at coupled scales by the method of
lattice Boltzmann and in upscaling from the microscopic to the macroscopic scale.
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Copyright 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
similar to that of fi . It has been shown using the
Chapman-Enskog expansion technique that such a LB
transport scheme recovers the convection-diffusion
equation successfully.
The LB method can be modified to include sur-
face reactions for simulating dissolution/precipitation
in 2D porous media (Kang et al., 2002a, 2003). In
this approach, the surface reactions are accounted for
as boundary conditions to the LB transport equation.
The resulting evolution of pore geometries is coupled
with the LB flow model by updating the geometries at
each time step. Then, the new flow field is passed to the
transport equation.As such, the coupling of flow, trans-
port, and reactions is achieved, leading to the dynamic
evolution of pore geometries.
and macroscopic scales. Shown in Figure 1 is one of We have developed a unified microscopic/macroscopic
such rock geometries obtained by computed micro- porous media method capable of simulating flow in
tomography at the resolution of microns, on which we various-length-scale porous systems and in systems
have performed detailed single and multi-phase LB where multiple-length scales coexist (Kang et al.,
simulations (Zhang et al., 2000). 2002a). The governing equations, omitted here, are
In the LB method, the primitive variable is the parti- similar to (3)(4) with an additional term to account
cle distribution function, which satisfies the following for resistance in the porous matrix. Application of
evolution equation (e.g., Rothman and Zaleski, 1997; this method to a unidirectional steady flow through
Chen and Doolen, 1998): a homogeneous and a heterogeneous porous medium
recovered Darcys law when the effects of inertial
forces and the Brinkman correction can be neglected.
Simulations performed on a fractured porous system
indicated that as far as the overall permeability of the
where fi is the particle velocity distribution function system was concerned, the current method gave a very
along the i direction, t is the time increment, is good result and that this method is capable of handling
the relaxation time relating to the kinetic viscosity by fractured systems with large length-scale spans.
eq
v = ( 0.5)RT , fi is the corresponding equilibrium Here we show an example of flow through a
distribution function, and e
i s are the discrete veloci- bimodal heterogeneous porous medium generated by
ties. The density and velocity of the fluid are calculated using a two-stage procedure. The field is 16 m 16 m,
from the particle distribution function via grid size is 81 81. The permeability field is com-
posed of two permeability populations: one with a
low mean permeability (the red material region),
and the other with a high mean value (the blue
region). The permeability also varies within each
It is well known that, using the Chapman-Enskog
region. Overall, the maximum value of the perme-
expansion, the LB equation (1), recovers the correct
ability is 6.07 1013 m2 , and the minimum value
continuity and momentum equations at the Navier-
is 8.46 1017 m2 . The pressure (head) difference
Stokes level (e.g., Chen and Doolen, 1998),
between the entrance and the exit is 0.5 m. The den-
sity and viscosity of the fluid are 997.81 kg/m3 and
1.00246 103 kg/m/s. There is no analytical solu-
tion for flow through such a porous medium because
of the heterogeneity of the medium, even though the
flow is assumed to be steady and Darcys law is satis-
fied. To verify the validity of the method in simulating
where p = RT is the fluid pressure. flow through such a medium, we compared our simu-
The transport of dissolved chemicals having low lation results with those obtained by using the Finite-
concentrations may be described by another distribu- Element Heat- and Mass-Transfer code (FEHM). In
tion function gi . This satisfies an evolution equation both simulations, grid size is 81 81; pressure (head)
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Copyright 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
16
k 1
34.869
34.3579
30.8353 current method
12.3452
12 5.84217 FEHM
0.8
3.64783
1.22104
0.397418
(p-po)/(pi-po)
0.238475
0.237247 0.6
8 0.21838
0.181986
0.170097
0.158534
0.13355 0.4
0.121968
0.10232
4 0.0792314
0.0355692
0.0156639 0.2
0.0132229
0.0127849
0
0 4 8 12 16 0
0 4 8 12 16
x (m)
Figure 2. The permeability distribution and the pressure
contours obtained by current method (solid lines) and FEHM
(dashed lines). The field is 16 m 16 m. The pressure (head) Figure 3. The dimensionless pressure profile at center line
is 0.5 m at entrance, and 10 m at exit. The permeability has the (y = 8 m) obtained by the current method (solid line) and
unit m2 , and its values are multiplied by 1014 . The Reynolds FEHM (dashed line). pi is the pressure at the entrance, and
number in the current method is 5.96 103 . po is the pressure at the exit.
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Copyright 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
10
*
4
and Dm is the molecular diffusivity. The Peclet number is 0 0.05 0.1 0.15
t*
51.35.
Figure 6. Time evolution of the mass transfer coefficient
between these two approaches although the latter is at Pe = 51.35. The coefficient and time are normalized with
more efficient computationally. respect to tc .
4 UPSCALING OF TRANSPORT
uniform spatially and integrating the relationship over
Figure 5 shows snapshots of the concentration field space leads to
at two dimensionless times for three scenarios (with
matrix porosity = 0, 0.308, and 0.601 and fac-
ture aperture of 1 mm). Time is made dimensionless
with characteristic time tc , defined as tc = h2 /Dm ,
where h is the channel (fracture) width and Dm is the
molecular diffusivity. The Peclet number (defined as
Pe = Uh/Dm ) is 51.35. When the pore matrix becomes where Mf and Mm are the respective total solute mass
permeable, the plume transfers some of its mass into in the facture and the matrix systems and Mf
= dMf /dt
the matrix as it migrates along the facture and some of is the rate of change of mass in the facture.
the mass in the matrix transfers back into the fracture Figure 6 shows the time evolution of the dimension-
after the main plume passes, creating a long tail. It is less mass transfer coefficient = tc for different
seen that both the mass transfer and plume tailing in matrix porosity values and facture apertures. It is seen
the facture are enhanced as increases. As such, the that with time the coefficient goes to a constant for
overall dispersion of a plume increases as the matrix all matrix porosity values under consideration. The
becomes more permeable. The spatial moments of the asymptotic mass transfer coefficient increases as the
plume can be analyzed on the basis of these detailed matrix porosity. The time taken for the coefficient to
concentration fields. reach a constant also increases with the porosity. The
Alternatively, the fractured porous media may mass transfer between the fracture and the matrix is
be conceptualized with dual-porosity and/or double- usually non-negligible even with porous matrix of low
permeability models (e.g., Warren and Root, 1963; porosity (e.g., 4% and 6.9%) and thus low permeabil-
Gerke and van Genuchten, 1993). In such models, the ity, in which the contribution of the matrix flow to the
mass transfer between the facture and matrix systems fractured system may be safely neglected (Kang et al.,
is commonly described by the following first-order 2002a).
model: Figure 7 plots the asymptotic mass transfer coef-
ficients as a function of (h/dg )2 for two fracture
apertures h, where dg is the average grain diameter
(the width of the grain, in our case). It is seen that for
h/dg > 1, the mass transfer coefficient is more or
where cf and cm are the solute concentration in the less a linear function of (h/dg )2 . Our simulations do
facture and the matrix, respectively, and is the mass not cover the region of h/dg < 1, which is not neces-
transfer coefficient. In the double-permeability model, sarily linear. When the fracture is wide compared to
an advection-induced component may be included in the average grain size, one has approximately = c
the mass transfer expression. However, in our simu- (h/dg )2 where c is a dimensionless constant, similar to
lations there is no lateral flow component owing to the formation factor, which depends on porosity, tor-
the specific boundary conditions. Assuming to be tuosity, and other factors. It is seen from Figure 7 that
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Copyright 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
2 media is non-Gaussian with long tails. The long tailing
stems from mass transfer between the fracture and the
porous matrix and from the contrast in flow velocities
1.6 in the two media. It was shown that when the frac-
ture aperture is sufficiently large, the mass transfer
coefficient is proportional to the matrix diffusivity and
1.2 inversely proportional to the square of the grain size
of the porous matrix. For such cases, the mass trans-
*
0
1 2 3 4
h2/dg2 REFERENCES
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