Abstract
Due to the low permeability of tight reservoirs, throats play a significant role in controlling fluid flow. Although many studies have been conducted to investigate fluid flow in throats in the microscale domain, comparatively fewer works have been devoted to study the effect of adsorption boundary layer (ABL) in throats based on the digital rock method. By considering an ABL, we investigate its effects on fluid flow. We build digital rock model based on computed tomography technology. Then, microscopic pore structures are extracted with watershed segmentation and pore geometries are meshed through Delaunay triangulation approach. Finally, using the meshed digital simulation model and finite element method, we investigate the effects of viscosity and thickness of ABL on microscale flow. Our results demonstrate that viscosity and thickness of ABL are major factors that significantly hinder fluid flow in throats.
Highlights
Low-permeability (< 50 mD ) oil and gas reservoirs are being widely considered by the oil and gas exploration and development in recent years (Sun et al 2017)
We investigate the effects of thickness and viscosity of adsorption boundary layer (ABL) on fluid flow in porous media by constructing digital rock models using the CT scanning method
By assuming the thickness of ABL is constant, we investigate the effect of ABL viscosity on the microscopic fluid flow in porous media
Summary
Low-permeability (< 50 mD ) oil and gas reservoirs are being widely considered by the oil and gas exploration and development in recent years (Sun et al 2017). Liquid molecules concentrated on the surface of pores result in a boundary region with higher fluid viscosity and form a stagnant liquid layer that is called adsorption boundary layer (ABL) (Fig. 1), which is one of the main reasons for the occurrence of nonlinear flow (Huang 1998; Song et al 2010; Huang et al 2013; Yang et al 2020c). Song et al (2019a) proposed a new single-channel flow model for describing nonlinear flow in low-permeability reservoirs based on ABL theory. Most of previous studies (Li et al 2015a; Tian et al 2016; Chen et al 2018) investigated the effect of ABL on fluid flow in a single pipe, whereas real porous media are more complicated. We investigate the effects of thickness and viscosity of ABL on fluid flow in porous media by constructing digital rock models using the CT scanning method. The flow behavior of digital rock models under the effect of ABL is discussed for different rock samples
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