The mathematical model that has been recognized to have the more accurate approximation to the physical laws govern subsurface hydrocarbon flow in reservoirs is the Compositional Model. The features of this model are adequate to describe not only the performance of a multiphase system but also to represent the transport of chemical species in a porous medium. Its importance relies not only on its current relevance to simulate petroleum extraction processes, such as, Primary, Secondary, and Enhanced Oil Recovery Process (EOR) processes but also, in the recent years, carbon dioxide (CO2) sequestration. The purpose of this study is to investigate the subsurface compositional flow under isothermal conditions for several oil well cases. While simultaneously addressing computational implementation finesses to contribute to the efficiency of the algorithm. This study provides the theoretical framework and computational implementation subtleties of an IMplicit Pressure Explicit Composition (IMPEC)-Volume-balance (VB), two-phase, equation-of-state, approach to model isothermal compositional flow based on the finite difference scheme. The developed model neglects capillary effects and diffusion. From the phase equilibrium premise, the model accounts for volumetric performances of the phases, compressibility of the phases, and composition-dependent viscosities. The Equation of State (EoS) employed to approximate the hydrocarbons behaviour is the Peng Robinson Equation of State (PR-EOS). Various numerical examples were simulated. The numerical results captured the complex physics involved, i.e., compositional, gravitational, phase-splitting, viscosity and relative permeability effects. Regarding the numerical scheme, a phase-volumetric-flux estimation eases the calculation of phase velocities by naturally fitting to phase-upstream-upwinding. And contributes to a faster computation and an efficient programming development.

In this research we consider developing a reservoir simulator capable of simulating complex coupled poromechanical processes on massively parallel computers. A variety of problems arising from petroleum and environmental engineering inherently necessitate the understanding of interactions between fluid flow and solid mechanics. Examples in petroleum engineering include reservoir compaction, wellbore collapse, sand production, and hydraulic fracturing. In environmental engineering, surface subsidence, carbon sequestration, and waste disposal are also coupled poromechanical processes. These economically and environmentally important problems motivate the active pursuit of robust, efficient, and accurate simulation tools for coupled poromechanical problems. Three coupling approaches are currently employed in the reservoir simulation community to solve the poromechanics system, namely, the fully implicit coupling (FIM), the explicit coupling, and the iterative coupling. The choice of the coupling scheme significantly affects the efficiency of the simulator and the accuracy of the solution. We adopt the fixed-stress iterative coupling scheme to solve the coupled system due to its advantages over the other two. Unlike the explicit coupling, the fixed-stress split has been theoretically proven to converge to the FIM for linear poroelasticity model. In addition, it is more efficient and easier to implement than the FIM. Our computational results indicate that this approach is also valid for multiphase flow. We discretize the quasi-static linear elasticity model for geomechanics in space using the continuous Galerkin (CG) finite element method (FEM) on general hexahedral grids. Fluid flow models are discretized by locally mass conservative schemes, specifically, the mixed finite element method (MFE) for the equation of state compositional flow on Cartesian grids and the multipoint flux mixed finite element method (MFMFE) for the single phase and two-phase flows on general hexahedral grids. While both the MFE and the MFMFE generate cell-centered stencils for pressure, the MFMFE has advantages in handling full tensor permeabilities and general geometry and boundary conditions. The MFMFE also obtains accurate fluxes at cell interfaces. These characteristics enable the simulation of more practical problems. For many reservoir simulation applications, for instance, the carbon sequestration simulation, we need to account for thermal effects on the compositional flow phase behavior and the solid structure stress evolution. We explicitly couple the poromechanics equations to a simplified energy conservation equation. A time-split scheme is used to solve heat convection and conduction successively. For the convection equation, a higher order Godunov method is employed to capture the sharp temperature front; for the conduction equation, the MFE is utilized. Simulations of coupled poromechanical or thermoporomechanical processes in field scales with high resolution usually require parallel computing capabilities. The flow models, the geomechanics model, and the thermodynamics model are modularized in the Integrated Parallel Accurate Reservoir Simulator (IPARS) which has been developed at the Center for Subsurface Modeling at the University of Texas at Austin. The IPARS framework handles structured (logically rectangular) grids and was originally designed for element-based data communication, such as the pressure data in the flow models. To parallelize the node-based geomechanics model, we enhance the capabilities of the IPARS framework for node-based data communication. Because the geomechanics linear system is more costly to solve than those of flow and thermodynamics models, the performance of linear solvers for the geomechanics model largely dictates the speed and scalability of the coupled simulator. We use the generalized minimal residual (GMRES) solver with the BoomerAMG preconditioner from the hypre library and the geometric multigrid (GMG) solver from the UG4 software toolbox to solve the geomechanics linear system. Additionally, the multilevel k-way mesh partitioning algorithm from METIS is used to generate high quality mesh partitioning to improve solver performance. Numerical examples of coupled poromechanics and thermoporomechanics simulations are presented to show the capabilities of the coupled simulator in solving practical problems accurately and efficiently. These examples include a real carbon sequestration field case with stress-dependent permeability, a synthetic thermoporoelastic reservoir simulation, poroelasticity simulations on highly distorted hexahedral grids, and parallel scalability tests on a massively parallel computer. / text

Dans la première partie de cette thèse nous traitons l’écoulement diphasique compositionnel, partiellement miscible et compressible en milieux poreux. Déplacement d'une phase par un autre est analysé. Nous examinons les mélanges non idéals, la pression est variable, et les concentrations de phase, la densité et la viscosité sont les fonctions de la pression. Le processus est décrit par le problème de Riemann qui admet des solutions discontinues. Nous avons développé une méthode numérique-analytique de solution pour déterminer les paramètres à tous les chocs avant résoudre les équations de flux. Cette méthode est basée sur la séparation de thermodynamique et hydrodynamique, proposée dans [Oladyshkin, Panfilov 2006] et qui était inapplicable à problème de Riemann, en raison de manque des conditions d’Hugoniot. Dans cette thèse, nous avons construit les conditions supplémentaires d'Hugoniot. Dans la deuxième partie, nous examinons l'écoulement diphasique lors que les zones monophasique apparaissent, dans cette zone, le fluide est sur/sous-saturés et les équations diphasique dégénèrent.Nous avons proposé de décrire les zones diphasique et sur/sous-saturés avec un système uniforme des équations diphasique classique en étendant le concept de saturation d'être négatif et supérieur à un. Physiquement, cela signifie que les états monophasiques sont considérés comme des états diphasiques consistant une phase imaginaire avec la saturation négative. Une telle extension de la saturation exige développement des conditions de consistance qui sont fait dans cette thèse.La dernière partie est consacrée ensuite à étendre le modèle HT-split pour le cas d’écoulement triphasique compositionnel. Nous avons obtenu le modèle asymptotique, dans lequel la thermodynamique et l'hydrodynamique sont séparées / In the first part of thesis we deal with two-phase multicomponent, partially miscible, compressible flow in porous media. Displacement of one phase by another is analyzed. We examine non ideal solutions, pressure is variable, and phase compositions, densities and viscosities are variable functions of pressure.The process is described by Riemann problem which admits discontinuous solutions.We developed a numerical-analytical method of solution to explicitly determine all shock parameters before solving the flow equations. This method is based on splitting thermodynamics and hydrodynamics, suggested in [Oladyshkin, Panfilov 2006]. Earlier this method was inapplicable to Riemann problem, due to the lack of Hugoniot conditions. In this thesis we have constructed additional Hugoniot conditions.In the second part we examine two-phase flow when the single-phase zones appear, in this zone the fluid is over/under-saturated and two-phase flow equations degenerate and they cannot be used. We proposed to describe two-phase and over/under-saturated single-phase zones by uniform system of classic two-phase equations while extending the concept of phase saturation to be negative and higher than one. Physically it means that the oversaturated single-phase states are considered as pseudo two-phase states consisting an imaginary phase with negative saturation. Such an extension of saturation requires developing some consistence conditions which have developed in this thesis.The last part then is devoted to extend the HT-split model to the case of three-phase compositional flow. We have obtained the general asymptotic model, in which the thermodynamics and hydrodynamics are split

Tight gas and shale oil play an important role in energy security and in meeting an increasing energy demand. Hydraulic fracturing is a widely used technology for recovering these resources. The design and evaluation of hydraulic fracture operation is critical for efficient production from tight gas and shale plays. The efficiency of fracturing jobs depends on the interaction between hydraulic (induced) and naturally occurring discrete fractures. In this work, a coupled reservoir-fracture flow model is described which accounts for varying reservoir geometries and complexities including non-planar fractures. Different flow models such as Darcy flow and Reynold's lubrication equation for fractures and reservoir, respectively are utilized to capture flow physics accurately. Furthermore, the geomechanics effects have been included by considering a multiphase Biot's model. An accurate modeling of solid deformations necessitates a better estimation of fluid pressure inside the fracture. The fractures and reservoir are modeled explicitly allowing accurate representation of contrasting physical descriptions associated with each of the two. The approach presented here is in contrast with existing averaging approaches such as dual and discrete-dual porosity models where the effects of fractures are averaged out. A fracture connected to an injection well shows significant width variations as compared to natural fractures where these changes are negligible. The capillary pressure contrast between the fracture and the reservoir is accounted for by utilizing different capillary pressure curves for the two features. Additionally, a quantitative assessment of hydraulic fracturing jobs relies upon accurate predictions of fracture growth during slick water injection for single and multistage fracturing scenarios. It is also important to consistently model the underlying physical processes from hydraulic fracturing to long-term production. A recently introduced thermodynamically consistent phase-field approach for pressurized fractures in porous medium is utilized which captures several characteristic features of crack propagation such as joining, branching and non-planar propagation in heterogeneous porous media. The phase-field approach captures both the fracture-width evolution and the fracture-length propagation. In this work, the phase-field fracture propagation model is briefly discussed followed by a technique for coupling this to a fractured poroelastic reservoir simulator. We also present a general compositional formulation using multipoint flux mixed finite element (MFMFE) method on general hexahedral grids with a future prospect of treating energized fractures. The mixed finite element framework allows for local mass conservation, accurate flux approximation and a more general treatment of boundary conditions. The multipoint flux inherent in MFMFE scheme allows the usage of a full permeability tensor. An accurate treatment of diffusive/dispersive fluxes owing to additional velocity degrees of freedom is also presented. The applications areas of interest include gas flooding, CO₂ sequestration, contaminant removal and groundwater remediation. / text