Homogenization techniques, dual mesh methods, and ranking techniques to speed-up CO2 storage modeling

Abstract : The main goal of the project H-CUBE (French National Agency, ANR funds) is to develop innovative modelling approach to evaluate CO2 flow in heterogeneous reservoirs. Homogenization techniques, dual mesh methods, and ranking techniques are developed to speed up the evaluated processes. An innovative “dual-mesh approach” for compositional modelling. Evolutions of the components are done on the high resolution grid and the pressure equation on a coarser grid to speed-up the flow modelling. In this case, the precision in fluid recovery is considerably improved and the CPU time and memory are much lower than for a full fine scale simulation [1]. Specific focus is given to (i) buoyant driven flow in unconsolidated sandy reservoirs containing shale layering, (ii) CO2 injection in fluvial sediment reservoirs, (iii) benchmarking on the SPE10 models [2]. Buoyant forces on the CO2 and brine vertical migration into a heterogeneous system are performed in a two folds fashion using both analytical and numerical upscaling methods. An analytical expression for effective multiphase flow properties in a laminar heterogeneous porous media generated with three level of complexity is proposed [3]. Dealing with multiple realization of heterogeneity field distribution of fluvial deposit in our case [4], appropriate ranking measures of the static realizations to select the limited number of geological realizations which are based on topological descriptors of the porous rock network to characterize a priori reservoir dynamic behaviour [5] are proposed.