Friday, February 6, 2009

Network Modeling (Part 1)

Friday, February 6, 2009

Multi phase flow in porous media is so complicated. There are many situations in the reservoir where one phase like gas or water displaces another one. Charles Marle in his book “Multiphase Flow in Porous Media” described the multiphase displacement processes which occur in oil reservoirs.

From economical perspective, we always need to predict fluids displacements behavior in order to manage our production from the fields. We are interested to know, for example,

How much oil can be recovered after water flooding?
Which one is more efficient; gas injection or water injection?

To answer these questions, we need to know the physics governing fluids movements which this accordingly requires detailed characteristics of porous media. We are still suffering from lack of fundamental mathematical equations to describe the porous media properly. However, there are many approaches taken over time which gives us valuable insight into the problem. One approach is network modeling tool which tries to determine the displacement processes in porous media by applying basic physics laws in microscopic scale.