Abstract
The thermo-hydraulic-mechanical (THM) response of low permeable media is of crucial significance in thermal fracturing for production of unconventional shale oil, enhanced geothermal systems, and waste disposal. During such processes, pore pressures and stresses change in a spatiotemporal manner due to hydraulic and thermal loadings. From the viewpoint of the energy balance equation, the available theoretical studies can be classified as local thermal equilibrium (LTE), and local thermal non-equilibrium (LTNE) models. LTE models consider identical temperature for different phase of the porous system. LTNE models allow different temperature variations in solid and fluid phases of a porous medium. Current LTNE studies are weakly-coupled – not incorporating thermo-osmosis. This paper presents novel coupled LTNE thermo-poroelastic solutions in a transversely isotropic saturated porous medium, incorporating thermo- osmosis effect. Solutions are obtained for permeable and impermeable boundaries. Thermo-osmosis is found to have a very different effect in case of LTNE versus LTE, resulting in a fundamentally different THM response. LTNE effect analysis reveals different THM responses under different heat transfer properties at the solid-fluid interface in low permeable strata.
Highlights
The thermo-hydraulic-mechanical (THM) behavior of low permeable media is of crucial significant in numerous projects including unconventional shale oil and tight sand [1], enhanced geothermal, and waste disposal [2, 3]
Thermoosmosis is a coupled process that is of significance in certain porous media, and is analogous to the Sorêt effect in solutions, which describes the influence of temperature gradient on fluid flow [15,16,17,18,19,20,21]
The current paper presents a new thermo-poroelastic theory to describe the THM response of transversely isotropic saturated porous media based on the Local Thermal Non-Equilibrium (LTNE) theory, incorporating thermal osmosis
Summary
The thermo-hydraulic-mechanical (THM) behavior of low permeable media is of crucial significant in numerous projects including unconventional shale oil and tight sand [1], enhanced geothermal, and waste disposal [2, 3]. Numerous researchers have studied the THM response of the porous media under different conditions (loading, material anisotropy, wellbore inclination, and heat transfer mechanisms) using the thermo-poroelastic theory [4,5,6,7,8,9]. The majority of the relevant literature was developed assuming local thermal equilibrium (LTE), where identical temperature is assumed for both the solid and fluid phases. This assumption is contingent upon large interstitial heat transfer coefficients between different phases, and the porous formation to have higher ratios of pore surface area to pore volume. The current paper presents a new thermo-poroelastic theory to describe the THM response of transversely isotropic saturated porous media based on the LTNE theory, incorporating thermal osmosis.
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