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Center for Nonlinear Studies |
Understanding the flow of fluids in the subsurface is key to the economical production of oil and gas, the effective management of water resources, and potentially to the geological storage of carbon dioxide emissions from industrial and power generation processes. While the fundamental physics of single-phase flow in simple porous media is well understood and can be comprehensively modeled, real fluids and geological media add complex phase behavior, wetting behavior, multi-phase flow, and multi-scale porosity and fracture transport to the list of physical effects to be modeled. If fluids are to be produced or injected at the surface, then the interaction of the subsurface flows with flows through engineered systems and wellbores must also be included to achieve satisfactory models. Finally, an overarching complexity is that the exact nature of subsurface heterogeneity can never be determined from surface measurements; in the real world, subsurface models must be continually updated as more information is gleaned from flow histories. I will review these different levels of sophistication in reservoir modeling and simulation, with particular attention to those aspects key to global society’s needs for energy.
Host: Bob Ecke, CNLS