Summary
This paper describes a general unstructured-grid, equation-of-state- (EOS)
based, fully implicit thermal simulator for complex reservoir processes. Under
the unstructured grid framework, the simulator uses Newton’s method to solve
component material-balance equations, energy-balance equation, and
volume-balance equation for component moles, energy, and pressure, where
chemical reactions and external heat sources/sinks are treated in source terms.
Because of the similarity among component material-balance equations and the
energy-balance equation, energy is treated as a "component" to achieve
a uniform formulation with common code for all simulations (black-oil,
compositional, and thermal).
The thermal simulator was validated using analytical models and other
thermal simulators. The thermal simulator is used to study grid-orientation
problems and to design and optimize Cold Lake heavy-oil development.
Introduction
Modern reservoir management requires a simulator to represent reservoir
details accurately using fine-scale geologic features, complex well paths, and
modeling of large-scale interactions among multiple fields. Unstructured
gridding makes it possible to capture and honor more geologic and engineering
detail in reservoir-simulation models with greater exactness than
Cartesian-based reservoir grids. However, industry generally has been reluctant
to apply this capability to practical reservoir simulation partly because of
concerns about potential loss in computational efficiency. Many papers have
been published under Cartesian-based framework (Mifflin et al. 1991; Watts
1986; Coats 1980; Watts et al. 2005). Few papers are available to address
reservoir simulation issues under general unstructured-grid framework (Naccache
1997; Beckner et al. 2001, 2006; Heinemann et al. 1991; Usadi et al. 2007;
Karypis and Kumar 1998).
© 2009. Society of Petroleum Engineers
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History
- Original manuscript received:
5 December 2006
- Meeting paper published:
26 February 2007
- Revised manuscript received:
29 January 2008
- Manuscript approved:
30 January 2008
- Published online:
1 June 2009
- Version of record:
1 June 2009
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