Numerical Simulation of Two-Phase Flows in Heterogeneous Porous Media

Authors

  • I. Carneiro LNCC
  • M. Borges LNCC/MCTI
  • S. Malta LNCC/MCTI

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5540/tema.2020.021.02.339

Keywords:

Finite volume methods, Heterogeneous porous media, Secondary recovery of reservoirs.

Abstract

In this work,we present three-dimensional numerical simulations of water-oil flow in porous media in order to analyze the influence of the heterogeneities in the porosity and permeability fields and, mainly, their relationships upon the phenomenon known in the literature as viscous fingering. For this, typical scenarios of heterogeneous reservoirs submitted to water injection (secondary recovery method) are considered. The results show that the porosity heterogeneities have a markable influence in the flow behavior when the permeability is closely related with porosity, for example, by the Kozeny-Carman (KC) relation.This kind of positive relation leads to a larger oil recovery, as the areas of high permeability(higher flow velocities) are associated with areas of high porosity (higher volume of pores), causing a delay in the breakthrough time. On the other hand, when both fields (porosity and permeability) are heterogeneous but independent of each other the influence of the porosity heterogeneities is smaller and may be negligible.



Author Biographies

I. Carneiro, LNCC

COGEA

M. Borges, LNCC/MCTI

COMOD

S. Malta, LNCC/MCTI

COMAC

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Published

2020-07-22

How to Cite

Carneiro, I., Borges, M., & Malta, S. (2020). Numerical Simulation of Two-Phase Flows in Heterogeneous Porous Media. Trends in Computational and Applied Mathematics, 21(2), 339. https://doi.org/10.5540/tema.2020.021.02.339

Issue

Vol. 21 No. 2 (2020)

Section

Original Article

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