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Full-field simulation of water-based EOR

We study and develop numerical tools that can be used to improve the resolution of EOR simulations and, in particular, capture accurately the impacts of the injected chemicals on the recovery process.

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Simulation technology developed in the project. From upper left to bottom right: potential ordering of cells to optimize nonlinear solver, stencil for higher-order scheme in 2D, neighborship definition used to set up stencil in 3D, simulation of water-alternating-gas (WAG) injection on field model, and comparison of first and second-order transport solvers. Source: SINTEF - click to enlarge.

Our research has primarily focused on innovative methods aimed at enhancing the efficiency of reservoir simulation by increasing the number of grid cells and, consequently, improving accuracy while significantly reducing computation time. This approach involves the implementation of various techniques, such as splitting methods for sequential resolution of pressure systems and fluid/chemical transport, multiscale methods for rapid pressure updates, enhanced nonlinear solvers for transport equations, and the utilization of diverse types of adaptive gridding.

Furthermore, we have explored the integration of higher-order discretization methods to mitigate numerical diffusion errors in both sequential and fully implicit simulations. Our findings are not only disseminated through journal papers and conference presentations but are also accessible as part of the MRST open-source reservoir simulation code .

Key Factors

Project duration

01/01/2015 - 31/12/2019

Project type

Researcher project

Funding

The Research Council of Norway, grant no. 244361

Relevant links:

PhD thesis: Efficient Solvers for Field-Scale Simulation of Flow and Transport in Porous Media, by Øystein S. Klemetsdal (NTNU, 2019).

Department

Mathematics and Cybernetics

Members of the project team