Particle tracing techniques for flows in porous media

Abstract

The prediction of flow in porous media has been of both current and historical interest. Recent developments, for example, in the in-situ gasification of coal, the removal of hydrocarbons from oil shale, and the extraction of oil and gas require an in-depth understanding of flow in porous geologic media. Existing procedures for investigating these problems require more empirical input than should be necessary if the porous media were adequately described by the computational scheme. The purpose of this paper is to develop a particle tracing scheme for calculating flows in porous media which will reduce the number of required empirical properties, such as permeability, and have application to more general flow regimes such as non-Darcy flows.