Multiphase Flow in Porous Media

Abstract

In the hydrocarbon reservoirs that are normally saturated with two or more fluids, in order for better description of the flowing fluids behaviors and rock fluid interaction, the concept of relative permeability and capillary pressure should be exploited. Brilliant by Petrell AS is an object-oriented (C++) multi-physics Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) package developed for simulation of flow. In the continuous process of improving the system, the aim of this work is to model the multiphase flow through porous media using Darcy s equation. The models in the developed code are based on the conservation equation for each mass to obtain the pressure and saturation fields. After the code is benchmarked against the results from Eclipse for the simulation of single-phase flow, another phase is added to the porous flow part of the code to perform the simulation of multiphase flow through porous media. In this process, first the transmissibilities in the already implemented FVM code have been corrected. Then capillary pressure equations and different relative permeability models have been added to the code. Two test cases, one self-constructed and one from SPE cases, are used to compare the performances of the implemented code and Eclipse. Simulation results are then shown for different relative permeability model.