DOE OSTI2014
The simulator is an isothermal, three-dimensional, four-phase, compositional, equation-of–state (EOS) simulator. We have named the simulator UTDOE-CO2 capable of simulating various recovery processes (i.e., primary, secondary waterflooding, and miscible and immiscible gas flooding). We include both the Peng-Robinson EOS and the Redlich-Kwong EOS models. A Gibbs stability test is also included in the model to perform a phase identification test to consistently label each phase for subsequent property calculations such as relative permeability, viscosity, density, interfacial tension, and capillary pressure. Our time step strategy is based on an IMPEC-type method (implicit pressure and explicit concentration). The gridblock pressure is solved first using the explicit dating of saturation-dependent terms. Subsequently, the material balance equations are solved explicitly for the total concentration of each component. The physical dispersion term is also included in the governing equations. The simulator includes (1) several foam model(s) for gas mobility control, (2) compositional relative permeability models with the hysteresis option, (3) corner point grid and several efficient solvers, (4) geomechanics module to compute stress field as the result of CO 2 injection/production, (5) the format of commercial visualization software, S3graf from Science-soft Ltd., was implemented for user friendly visualization of the simulation results. All tasks are completed and the simulator was fully tested and delivered to the DOE office including a user’s guide and several input files and the executable for Windows Pcs. We have published several SPE papers, presented several posters, and one MS thesis is completed (V. Pudugramam, 2013) resulting from this DOE funded project.