Upscaling of upward CO2 migration in 2D system

Abstract

A procedure for upscaling CO2 buoyancy driven upward migration in finite-difference simulation models is presented in this work. This upscaling procedure accounts for capillary and buoyancy forces to enable CO2 upward migration modeling in coarser grids while accounting for dominant fine-scaled geological effects. The developed method is applied to 2D domains with no-flow boundary conditions. The absolute permeability field is correlated in the horizontal direction, with zero correlation in the vertical direction. Capillary pressure is parameterized using a Leveret J-function. A Dykstra-Parsons coefficient of 0.7 was used to generate a relatively heterogeneous absolute permeability field and hence test the developed algorithm under more stringent conditions. Multiphase flow upscaling is improved by accounting for spatial connectivity (percolation), which enables us to obtain more realistic rock-fluid pseudo-functions and capture effects of local capillary trapping at the fine scale (meso-scale trapping). The upscaling method and estimation of rock-fluid functions are numerically tested and compared with currently accepted single and multiphase flow upscaling methods. Results show that single-phase flow upscaling is insufficient, because it fails to adequately predict mobility and residual saturation, and hence multiphase flow upscaling should be employed. Significant improvement in gas travel time (representative of mobility) and trapped CO2 saturation (representative of trapped saturation) are observed when spatial connectivity (percolation) is included. The simulation execution time reduces 17-fold through upscaling. This speedup will enable simulating 3D CO2 sequestration simulation scenarios.