(295d) Study of Injected Water Recovery Based on New Discrete Fracture Network Approach
AIChE Annual Meeting
2017
2017 Annual Meeting
Upstream Engineering and Flow Assurance Forum
Innovations in Production of Unconventional Reservoirs
Tuesday, October 31, 2017 - 9:15am to 9:40am
Existing literature cites using commercial reservoir simulation software to simulate post-treatment water recovery. Some of those studies did not capture non-orthogonal, complex fracture geometries of fractures; this is a disadvantage of finite difference simulators. The protocol adopted was to implement a new DFN to a Control Volume Finite Element Method (CVFEM) reservoir simulator. This new DFN methodology has several advantages over many traditional DFN protocols: (1) fracture segments have their own control volumes, rock-fluid properties, pressures, and saturations, and (2) fracture geometries are independent of matrix discretization. The simulator has been verified by comparing simulation results with both Millerâs analytical solution. The new simulator has been applied to analyze the recovery of injected water in a multiphase, mixed wettability environment. This has included:
- Demonstrating the role of different rock-fluid properties such as relative permeability on the water recovery factor, and,
- Comparing the impact of various fracture geometries - such as orthogonal fracture systems (characteristic of dual porosity simulations) and non-orthogonal fracture systems where self-propping may be generated (at least temporarily) due to shearing.