SPE Reservoir Evaluation & Engineering
Volume 13, Number 3, June 2010, pp. 372-382

Summary

We explore the extension of streamline simulation to thermal recovery processes. For each global timestep, we first compute the pressure field on an Eulerian grid. We then solve for the advective parts of the mass balance and energy equations along the individual streamlines. At the end of each global timestep, we account for the nonadvective terms of the transport equations on the Eulerian grid along with gravity, using the operator splitting method. We included temperature-dependent viscosity and account for thermal expansion of the fluids. We tested our streamline simulator on 2D heterogeneous quarter five-spot problems and compared the results with those computed by a commercial thermal simulator both for accuracy and computational efficiency. We present sensitivity studies for effects of fluid compressibility, gravity, and thermal conductivity.For the cases investigated, our thermal streamline simulator is capable of producing accurate results at a computational cost that is significantly lower than that of existing Eulerian simulators.

© 2010. Society of Petroleum Engineers

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History

• Original manuscript received: 4 November 2008
• Meeting paper published: 3 February 2009
• Revised manuscript received: 21 June 2009
• Manuscript approved: 14 July 2009
• Published online: 7 June 2010
• Version of record: 22 June 2010