TY - JOUR
T1 - A grid-free particle tracking simulation for tracer dispersion in porous reservoir model
AU - Widiatmojo, Arif
AU - Sasaki, Kyuro
AU - Yousefi-Sahzabi, Amin
AU - Nguele, Ronald
AU - Sugai, Yuichi
AU - Maeda, Atsushi
N1 - Funding Information:
Authors would like to acknowledge Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) for the financial supports (P14379/26-04379) and KAKENHI(14F04379).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
PY - 2015/9/1
Y1 - 2015/9/1
N2 - Tracer test is a useful method to investigate various phenomena in geological porous media including groundwater contaminant transport, sweep efficiency and retention time in oil reservoir, reservoir characterization, fractures orientation assessment, as well as geothermal reservoir evaluation. Numerical methods are powerful tools in interpreting tracer test results. However, they are limited by computational restrictions which include finer grid requirements and small calculation steps. In this study, an analog model of a quarter five-spot porous reservoir was simulated by using random walk particle tracking method. This scheme used 'method of images' with pairs of injector-producer potential flow to generate the velocity vectors instead of conventionally solving Darcy's equation to obtain grid velocities. Simulated breakthrough concentration profiles and flow visualization were compared with both experimental results and Eulerian-grid based finite volume simulation. The predicted breakthrough curves of tracer concentration were found to agree with experimental data sets. In addition to be free from numerical errors as often encountered in grid-based simulation, the proposed particle tracking model showed a faster computational time. Unlike the conventional grid method, this technique provides inherently smooth and continuous flow field at arbitrary position within the reservoir model.
AB - Tracer test is a useful method to investigate various phenomena in geological porous media including groundwater contaminant transport, sweep efficiency and retention time in oil reservoir, reservoir characterization, fractures orientation assessment, as well as geothermal reservoir evaluation. Numerical methods are powerful tools in interpreting tracer test results. However, they are limited by computational restrictions which include finer grid requirements and small calculation steps. In this study, an analog model of a quarter five-spot porous reservoir was simulated by using random walk particle tracking method. This scheme used 'method of images' with pairs of injector-producer potential flow to generate the velocity vectors instead of conventionally solving Darcy's equation to obtain grid velocities. Simulated breakthrough concentration profiles and flow visualization were compared with both experimental results and Eulerian-grid based finite volume simulation. The predicted breakthrough curves of tracer concentration were found to agree with experimental data sets. In addition to be free from numerical errors as often encountered in grid-based simulation, the proposed particle tracking model showed a faster computational time. Unlike the conventional grid method, this technique provides inherently smooth and continuous flow field at arbitrary position within the reservoir model.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84937417768&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213397615000269
U2 - 10.1016/j.juogr.2015.05.005
DO - 10.1016/j.juogr.2015.05.005
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84937417768
SN - 2213-3976
VL - 11
SP - 75
EP - 81
JO - Journal of Unconventional Oil and Gas Resources
JF - Journal of Unconventional Oil and Gas Resources
ER -