Discontinuous Galerkin method for solving the black‐oil problem in porous media

Abstract

We introduce a new algorithm for solving the three‐component three‐phase flow problem in two‐dimensional and three‐dimensional heterogeneous media. The oil and gas components can be found in the liquid and vapor phases, whereas the aqueous phase is only composed of water component. The numerical scheme employs a sequential implicit formulation discretized with discontinuous finite elements. Capillarity and gravity effects are included. The method is shown to be accurate and robust for several test problems. It has been carefully designed so that calculation of appearance and disappearance of phases does not require additional steps.