Water injection into vapor- and liquid-dominated reservoirs: Modeling of heat transfer and mass transport
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab., CA (United States)
This paper summarizes recent advances in methods for simulating water and tracer injection, and presents illustrative applications to liquid- and vapor-dominated geothermal reservoirs. High-resolution simulations of water injection into heterogeneous, vertical fractures in superheated vapor zones were performed. Injected water was found to move in dendritic patterns, and to experience stronger lateral flow effects than predicted from homogeneous medium models. Higher-order differencing methods were applied to modeling water and tracer injection into liquid-dominated systems. Conventional upstream weighting techniques were shown to be adequate for predicting the migration of thermal fronts, while higher-order methods give far better accuracy for tracer transport. A new fluid property module for the TOUGH2 simulator is described which allows a more accurate description of geofluids, and includes mineral dissolution and precipitation effects with associated porosity and permeability change. Comparisons between numerical simulation predictions and data for laboratory and field injection experiments are summarized. Enhanced simulation capabilities include a new linear solver package for TOUGH2, and inverse modeling techniques for automatic history matching and optimization.
- Research Organization:
- USDOE Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC03-76SF00098
- OSTI ID:
- 603403
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/EE-0139; CONF-970376-; ON: DE98001891; TRN: 98:001819-0004
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 15. US Department of Energy`s geothermal program review, San Francisco, CA (United States), 24-26 Mar 1997; Other Information: PBD: 1997; Related Information: Is Part Of Role of research in the changing world of energy supply. Proceedings geothermal program review XV; PB: 347 p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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