Jianlin Zhao

Study of Gas Flow Characteristics in Tight Porous Media with a Microscale Lattice Boltzmann Model

To investigate the gas flow characteristics in tight porous media, a microscale lattice Boltzmann (LB) model with the regularization procedure is firstly adopted to simulate gas flow in three-dimensional (3D) digital rocks. A shale digital rock and a sandstone digital rock are reconstructed to study the effects of pressure, temperature and pore size on microscale gas flow. The simulation results show that because of the microscale effect in tight porous media, the apparent permeability is always higher than the intrinsic permeability, and with the decrease of pressure or pore size, or with the increase of temperature, the difference between apparent permeability and intrinsic permeability increases. In addition, the Knudsen numbers under different conditions are calculated and the results show that gas flow characteristics in the digital rocks under different Knudsen numbers are quite different. With the increase of Knudsen number, gas flow in the digital rocks becomes more uniform and the effect of heterogeneity of the porous media on gas flow decreases. Finally, two commonly used apparent permeability calculation models are evaluated by the simulation results and the Klinkenberg model shows better accuracy. In addition, a better proportionality factor in Klinkenberg model is proposed according to the simulation results.

Simulation of microscale gas flow in heterogeneous porous media based on the lattice Boltzmann method

A microscale multi-relaxation-time lattice Boltzmann model with the regularization procedure is adopted to simulate gas flow in different porous media. The diffuse reflection boundary condition is used to deal with the random solid boundaries. Because of the complex geometry of the pores, the characteristic length is no longer a constant but a function of the pore locations for the porous media. A rational method is proposed to obtain the local characteristic lengths of the porous media for the microscale gas flow simulations. The simulation results show that gas flow characteristics in different flow regions are notably different. In the continuum flow region and slip flow region, the gas flow abilities in different pores are quite different. The effect of heterogeneity of the porous media on gas velocity distribution is very obvious. As the Knudsen number increases, the differences of gas flow abilities in different pores decrease. For gas flow in the strong transition flow region and free molecular flo...

Gas flow regimes judgement in nanoporous media by digital core analysis

Abstract A method to judge shale gas flow regimes based on digital core analysis is proposed in this work. Firstly, three-dimensional shale digital cores in an anonymous shale formation in the Sichuan Basin are reconstructed by a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm based on two-dimensional Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) images. Then a voxel-based method is proposed to calculate the characteristic length of the three-dimensional shale digital core. The Knudsen number for three-dimensional shale digital cores is calculated by the ratio of the molecular mean free path to the characteristic length and is used to judge the flow regimes under different reservoir conditions. The results indicate that shale gas flow regimes are mainly located at the slip flow and transition flow region. Furthermore, adsorption has no obvious influence on the free gas flow regimes. Because adsorption only exists in organic pores, three-dimensional inorganic pores and organic pores in the Haynesville shale formation are reconstructed by a MCMC algorithm based on two-dimensional SEM images. The characteristic lengths of the three-dimensional inorganic pores and three-dimensional organic pores are both calculated and gas flow regimes in organic pores and inorganic pores are judged.