Fractal characterization of permeability prediction model in hydrate-bearing porous media

Abstract

Studies have shown that the permeability plays an extremely important role in NGHs decomposition flow and production analysis. However, several existing permeability calculation models are very divergent and usually contain some empirical parameters with unclear physical meaning. The accurate determination of these empirical parameters is often very difficult and needs to be improved urgently. In this work, a novel fractal permeability prediction model for water flowing through hydrate-bearing porous media is established based on the fractal theory. The fractal permeability model is expressed as a function of the pore area fractal dimension, tortuous dimension, porosity, hydrate saturation, and maximum pore diameter. In this expression, each parameters has specific physical meaning. The reliability of the deduced model is validated by comparing predictive results of the model with the available open experimental data. A good agreement is found between them and the accuracy of model prediction is always within ±10% error range.