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Title: Simulation of Gas Production from Multilayered Hydrate-Bearing Media with Fully Coupled Flow, Thermal, Chemical and Geomechanical Processes Using TOUGH+Millstone. Part 2: Geomechanical Formulation and Numerical Coupling

Journal Article · · Transport in Porous Media
 [1];  [2]; ORCiD logo [1]
  1. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  2. Texas A & M Univ., College Station, TX (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

The TOUGH+Millstone simulator has been developed for the analysis of coupled flow, thermal and geomechanical processes associated with the formation and/or dissociation of CH4 hydrates in geological media. It is composed of two constituent codes: (a) a significantly enhanced version of the TOUGH+HYDRATE simulator, v2.0, that accounts for all known flow, physical, thermodynamic and chemical processes associated with the behavior of hydrate-bearing systems undergoing changes and includes the most recent advances in the description of the system properties, coupled seamlessly with (b) Millstone v1.0, a new code that addresses the conceptual, computational and mathematical shortcomings of earlier codes used to describe the geomechanical response of these systems. The capabilities of the TOUGH+Millstone code are demonstrated in the simulation and analysis of the system flow, thermal and geomechanical behavior during gas production from a realistic complex offshore hydrate deposit. In the second part of this series, we describe the Millstone geomechanical simulator. The hydrate-dependent, rate-based poromechanical formulation is presented and solved using a finite element discretization. A novel multimesh coupling scheme is introduced, wherein interpolators are automatically built to transfer data between the finite difference discretization of TOUGH+ and the finite element discretization of Millstone. We provide verification examples against analytic solutions for poroelasticity and a simplified demonstration problem for mechanically induced phase change in a hydrate sediment.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
1564024
Journal Information:
Transport in Porous Media, Vol. 128, Issue 1; ISSN 0169-3913
Publisher:
SpringerCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 12 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (1)

Solution of the Problem of Natural Gas Storages Creating in Gas Hydrate State in Porous Reservoirs journal January 2020