Effect of Geometry on Pore-Scale Simulation of Single-Phase Fluid Flow
Master thesis
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http://hdl.handle.net/11250/2615134Utgivelsesdato
2018Metadata
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Sammendrag
Accurate estimation of physical rock properties is a crucial step in the process of designinga reservoir model for development reasons and to optimize hydrocarbon production.Absolute permeability is one of those properties. Digital rock physics have evolvedas a promising new technology to complement traditional laboratory experiments oncore plugs. Background and theory on digital rock physics regarding numerical predictionsof absolute permeability through single-phase incompressible fluid flow arepresented.In this thesis, two-dimensional pore structure images of different geometries arecreated with the programming language Python to study fluid flow behavior in differentpore structure geometries. The material simulator GeoDict is used to simulate single-phaseincompressible fluid flow in the different pore geometry images. The work inthis thesis a theoretical approach and the motivation is to look at absolute permeabilitybehavior as the pore throat radius is decreased relative to the pore radius. The ratio ofpore radius to pore throat radius is defined as the F ratio. Among the pore geometriesstudied in this thesis, are: circular, triangular, diamond and ellipsoidal pores.It is observed that the numerically predicted absolute permeability versus increasingF ratio for all pore structure geometries follows a power function trendline. In addition,it is found that triangular pores show the largest variations in predicted permeabilityas the F ratio varies. On the other hand, the highest permeability with least variationis observed for ellipsoidal pores when fluid flows in the direction of the largest ellipsoidalradius. Interpretation of numerically predicted permeability results are based onthe theoretical approach of this study. For future studies, investigation of permeabilitybehavior in geometries that are comparable to real rocks can be studied. Thus, the resultsare more applicable to fluid flow problems in realistic porous media. In addition,it is suggested that permeability behavior of more complex pore geometries should bestudied.