Multi-scale Modeling of Compressible Single-phase Flow in Porous Media using Molecular Simulation

Abstract

In this study, an efficient coupling between Monte Carlo (MC) molecular simulation and Darcy-scale flow in porous media is presented. The cell-centered finite difference method with a non-uniform rectangular mesh were used to discretize the simulation domain and solve the governing equations. To speed up the MC simulations, we implemented a recently developed scheme that quickly generates MC Markov chains out of pre-computed ones, based on the reweighting and reconstruction algorithm. This method astonishingly reduces the required computational time by MC simulations from hours to seconds. In addition, the reweighting and reconstruction scheme, which was originally designed to work with the LJ potential model, is extended to work with a potential model that accounts for the molecular quadrupole moment of fluids with non-spherical molecules such as CO2. The potential model was used to simulate the thermodynamic equilibrium properties for single-phase and two-phase systems using the canonical ensemble and the Gibbs ensemble, respectively. Comparing the simulation results with the experimental data showed that the implemented model has an excellent fit outperforming the standard LJ model. To demonstrate the strength of the proposed coupling in terms of computational time efficiency and numerical accuracy in fluid properties, various numerical experiments covering different compressible single-phase flow scenarios were conducted. The novelty in the introduced scheme is in allowing an efficient coupling of the molecular scale and Darcy scale in reservoir simulators. This leads to an accurate description of the thermodynamic behavior of the simulated reservoir fluids; consequently enhancing the confidence in the flow predictions in porous media.

Date of Award	May 2016
Original language	English (US)
Awarding Institution	Physical Sciences and Engineering
Supervisor	Shuyu Sun (Supervisor)