Mohammadi Masoud, Shafiei Masoud, Zarin Taha, Kazemzadeh Yousef, Parsaei Rafat, Riazi Masoud
Department of Petroleum Engineering, School of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran.
Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) Research Centre, IOR-EOR Research Institute, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran.
Sci Rep. 2024 Sep 27;14(1):22144. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-73450-4.
The drainage and imbibition processes are critical mechanisms in petroleum engineering. These processes in a porous medium are controlled by surface forces and pressure gradients. The study of these processes in the pore scale by common simulators always has limitations in multiphase flow modeling. Also, obtaining relative permeability curves through laboratory analysis requires expensive equipment. Additionally, these laboratory experiments are quite expensive and may introduce significant uncertainties. For this purpose, this study investigated the creation of relative permeability curves and their effect on oil production. Initially, single-phase fluid and two-phase droplet flow within a fracture with both soft and rough surfaces were utilized to validate the formulation of the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method. Then, by using three randomly constructed porous medium models, the imbibition and drainage processes have been studied. Finally, sensitivity study has been carried out on critical parameters related to fluid flow dynamics in the porous environment, including pressure changes, wettability, and heterogeneity in drainage and imbibition processes. The simulation results were consistent with current theories; therefore, it is reasonable to consider SPH to characterize the fluid flow dynamic during the drainage and imbibition processes. According to sensitivity studies, pressure gradient (residual saturation of displaced fluid is about 5.65% and 8.44%) and heterogeneity (the residual saturation of the displaced fluid was 4.04% and 2.98%) have the largest impact on flow modeling in both drainage and imbibition processes and wettability (the residual saturation became 36.62% and 5.12%) has significant effect on the drainage process through porous medium. In general, fluid flow dynamic studies can be performed using the SPH method to model fluid flow in simple and complex porous medium under various flow conditions. The SPH method can also be used as an applicable tool to investigate the hydrocarbon fluids flow within larger geometries in the future.
渗流和吸渗过程是石油工程中的关键机制。这些过程在多孔介质中由表面力和压力梯度控制。使用通用模拟器在孔隙尺度上研究这些过程在多相流建模中总是存在局限性。此外，通过实验室分析获得相对渗透率曲线需要昂贵的设备。此外，这些实验室实验成本很高，并且可能引入显著的不确定性。为此，本研究调查了相对渗透率曲线的生成及其对石油产量的影响。首先，利用单相流体以及在具有光滑和粗糙表面的裂缝内的两相液滴流来验证光滑粒子流体动力学（SPH）方法的公式。然后，通过使用三个随机构建的多孔介质模型，研究了吸渗和渗流过程。最后，对与多孔环境中流体流动动力学相关的关键参数进行了敏感性研究，包括渗流和吸渗过程中的压力变化、润湿性和非均质性。模拟结果与当前理论一致；因此，认为SPH可用于表征渗流和吸渗过程中的流体流动动力学是合理的。根据敏感性研究，压力梯度（被驱替流体的残余饱和度约为5.65%和8.44%）和非均质性（被驱替流体的残余饱和度为4.04%和2.98%）在渗流和吸渗过程中对流动建模的影响最大，而润湿性（残余饱和度变为36.62%和5.12%）对通过多孔介质的渗流过程有显著影响。总体而言，可使用SPH方法进行流体流动动力学研究，以模拟各种流动条件下简单和复杂多孔介质中的流体流动。未来，SPH方法也可作为一种适用工具来研究更大几何形状内的烃类流体流动。
