OCCAM › Research › Resources, Energy and Environment › REE1: Lattice Boltzmann

REE1: Lattice Boltzmann methods for multiphase flow in porous media with applications to CO2 sequestration

Researcher: 
 Dr Tim Reis
Team Leader(s): Dr Paul Dellar & Prof. John Ockendon
Collaborators: Prof. Chris Farmer & Dr Garf Bowen, Schlumberger

Project completed December 31, 2011; Project Report to follow

Background

Multiphase flow in porous media is of crucial importance in many environmental applications and in the oil industry.  Unfortunately, in practice many of the interfaces between the different phases are prone to small scale instabilities.  State-of-the-art discretisations are only able to make predictions that are theoretically sound when the flow parameters are such that the interfaces are many times thicker than is realistic in practical applications.  Tuning the parameters to sharpen the interfaces leads to unphysical behaviour like pinning (where the interface does not move) and facetting (when the interface consists of planar segments).  This is the case even when there is enough resolution for the interface to contain as many as ten grid points.

REE1

Aims

Our aim is to develop algorithms that have the capability to track the phase interfaces that occur in multiphase flow in porous media.  Rather than aiming to predict the flow in full detail, we are focusing on methods that will allow the average speed of the interface to be predicted accurately.

Project

Lattice Boltzmann methods have been the subject of many attempts at computing multiphase flows in porous media but there remains much room for improvement in cases of relatively sharp interfaces which may suffer from short wavelength instabilities.  Our project will be to transfer technology from the area of combustion, where flame fronts are also usually very thin compared to other length scales in the flow, and are also prone to short wavelength instabilities.  The main idea is to use the concept of “Stochastic Sharpening”, which allows key factors of the interface, such as its average speed, to be predicted reliably even when single numerical realisations are unphysical.  Progress in this project will have implications for the design of reservoir simulations particularly with respect to robust and efficient techniques for simulations the unstable displacements that occur in CO2 sequestration.

Last updated by Kate Lewin on Thu, 16/02/2012 - 1:09pm from a page originally created by Charlotte Mayall.
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