A semi-analytic porosity evolution scheme for simulating wormhole propagation with the Darcy–Brinkman–Forchheimer model

Abstract

In this paper, we consider numerical simulation of wormhole propagation with the Darcy–Brinkman–Forchheimer model. Matrix acidization in carbonate reservoirs is a widely practiced technique in the product enhancement of the oil and gas reservoir. A wormhole, i.e. a flow channel with high porosity, is generated during reactive dissolution of carbonates by the action of the injected acid. In the wormhole forming process, the porosity changes non-uniformly in space, and it even becomes close to unity in the central regions of a wormhole. The Darcy–Brinkman–Forchheimer model accounts for both the porous media and clear fluid area, so it can be used to model wormhole propagation perfectly. This model, however, strongly depends on porosity. Therefore, the time schemes for solving the evolutionary equation of porosity have a significant effect on accuracy and stability of the numerical simulation for wormhole propagation. We propose a semi-analytic time scheme, which solves the porosity equation analytically at each time step for given acid concentration. The proposed numerical method can improve the accuracy and stability of numerical simulation significantly. For theoretical analysis of the proposed time scheme for the wormhole simulation, we first reconstruct the analytical functions of porosity to analyze the time error of the porosity, and on the basis of error estimates of porosity, we employ a coupled analysis approach to achieve the estimates of pressure, velocity and solute concentration. The time error estimates for velocity, pressure, concentration and porosity are obtained in different norms. Finally, numerical results are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.