Speaker
Description
The study of multi-phase flow of fluids in reservoirs is of particular interest in the field of petroleum recovery. This process is studied with estimated or experimentally determined parameter values and some assumptions. Capillary pressure is one of the effective parameters influencing fluid flow in hydrocarbon reservoirs. However, it is assumed negligible by most researchers despite its importance. In this work, a two-phase (oil-water) flow with the effect of capillary pressure was modelled and transformed using fractional flow formulation. The model equations obtained from the fractional formulation comprise an elliptic-pressure equation and a parabolic-saturation equation. The Finite element (FE) method was employed to discretize the elliptic-pressure equation and the corresponding parabolic-saturation equation discretized by the Finite volume (FV) method. Results from the numerical simulation of the model revealed that capillary pressure has effect on saturation profile which was observed in diffusive dominated problems but with less effect in advective-diffusive problems which was observed at points where saturation gradient was high.
