SPE 79692
A New Formulation for the Implicit Compositional Simulation of
Miscible Gas Injection Processes
Garf Bowen, Paul Crumpton, Schlumberger
Copyright 2003, Society of Petroleum Engineers Inc.
This paper was prepared for presentation at the SPE Reservoir Simulation Symposium held in
Houston, Texas, U.S.A., 3–5 February 2003.
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Abstract
Compositional simulation is an important tool in gas injections
studies. Often the aim of a gas injection project is to enhance
the sweep efficiency by generating miscible displacement,
either by utilizing a first contact or multiple-contact process.
The compositional simulator is the only tool available to
quantitatively study this behavior in a field setting.
The paper introduces the concept of treating a single-phase
hydrocarbon as a separate distinct phase. This has the effect
of reducing discretisation non-linearities in single-phase
regions and allowing an implicit solution to converge
efficiently. A number of small illustrative models will be used
to demonstrate the technique, where the effect of varying
degrees of implicitness will be reported, these being fully
implicit, IMPES and AIM. In several of the example cases the
standard implicit solutions are shown to fail entirely. The
CPU advantage of the reduced non-linearity will be illustrated
using a field scale example solved with an adaptive
implicit method.
Introduction
There is an increasing trend towards a higher degree of
implicitness in compositional studies. This can be
accomplished either by utilizing a fully implicit formulation,
where explicit methods are not applicable such as in dual
porosity cases, or alternatively by using an adaptive implicit
scheme to allow increased time step lengths and to improve
robustness. Non-linearities associated with the transition from
a heavy hydrocarbon (oil like) to a light hydrocarbon (gas like)
state without passing through the two-phase region are
examined in this paper. This can be thought of as a first
contact miscible process or as part of a multi-contact
miscible displacement.
Time Discretisation in Compositional models
For much of the history of reservoir simulation there has been
a discussion around the time discretisation used in finite
difference simulators. While the pressure equation is almost
always solved implicitly, the saturation or compositional
component equations can be treated either explicitly or
implicitly. The explicit or IMPES (implicit pressure explicit
saturation) technique leads to a relatively fast solution of a
time step but stability constraints limit the time step size. In
production simulators this time step constraint can lead to a
lack of robustness as small differences in variables due to the
smaller time step may result in significantly different time step
histories. An alternative to IMPES is a fully implicit scheme
which results in larger time step sizes being stable at the
expense of a significantly increased cost to solve a time step.
In black oil simulation the trend has been towards the use
of implicit schemes for most applications. The trade-off is
that the implicit solution of the three black oil conservation
equations is not prohibitively expensive when set against the
increased robustness and sometimes speed gain of the solution
technique. Once we consider compositional cases, the storage
required for an implicit scheme grows as the square of the
number of components and the work required as the cube. In
practice modern cache based computers tend to hide the cubic
behavior. However, if we’re interested in ten or twelve
component fluid descriptions then the implicit scheme is
prohibitively expensive. Even with fewer components the
technique is intolerant of small changes to the fluid description
involving extra components.
To try and gain the advantages of an implicit scheme in
compositional modeling, the industry has moved towards
adaptive implicit schemes (AIM) where only selective cells
that need to be are solved implicitly, while the rest are solved
using an IMPES type method. A number of authors1 have
shown that these schemes are unlikely to lead to a significant
improvement in performance. However, they do hold out the
promise of improved robustness in production codes.
Adaptive implicit schemes throw a heavy burden on the
programmer, both to realize the potential memory efficiency
and because for an AIM run to work well the code must
effectively run both IMPES and Implicit cases. The time step
selection and implicit cell selection must keep the explicit
model stable, while the non-linear solver must be able to
2 SPE 79692
converge out the implicit cells. There is little point in making
cells implicit if the poor convergence leads to longer run times
than the corresponding IMPES solution.
Convergence of any implicit formulation is intolerant to
discontinuities. In this paper the discontinuities that arise from
arbitrary phase labeling of super-critical fluids are addressed,
which enables implicit treatment of the miscible process. In
this paper the numerical discontinuities are matched to the
physical ones, i.e. at phase boundaries.
The continuous oil-gas transition
Many authors have described a compositional model based on
a cubic equation of state2,3. Here we assume that the standard
2 phase flash calculations and the single-phase stability test
are available. The focus is on those features of a compositional
fluid description that can have an adverse effect on
convergence of the flow equations.
A fundamental difference between an equation of state
model and a black-oil fluid description is that a vapor phase
can seamlessly change into a liquid phase without an
intermediate 2-phase transition. Typically we illustrate this
idea by considering a ternary diagram, Figure 2, with an
injection fluid that would be considered a gas, in an oil
reservoir. In this case first contact miscibility will be achieved
and all the mixtures between injected and reservoir fluids are
“single-phase”. The transition from a gas-like fluid to an oil-
like fluid is continuous. This is in contrast to multi-contact
miscibility conditions where fluids will separate into 2-phases,
each having different fluid properties. As fluids pass from
single to multi-phase conditions, discontinuities exist as the
phases separate.
The conservation equations
The component conservation equations can be written.
∂M
c
+ ∇ .F c = Q c (1)
∂t
for all components c. The primary variables used here are
molar densities and are well documented in the literature2,4.
All the approaches described here can be easily generalized to
deal with other variable sets3. Calculation of the mass term is
unambiguous to phase and is not described here. In addition
the well terms are not described. The main focus of the
following derivation is the flow terms where the degree of
implicitness in the formulation is critical. Details of the finite
volume discretisation are also not described here4,5.
In order to analyze the non-linearities, consider the
definition of the discrete flux between two cells i and j as seen
in Figure 1. The flux for component c is given by
Fc ,ij = ∑ Ti , j λ+c ,α vij ,α (2)
∀α
Conventionally α can be oil, gas and water. Here a fourth
“hydrocarbon” phase is introduced which represents all single-
phase hydrocarbon cells.
For single-phase hydrocarbon cells i and j in Figure 1,
consider the effects of arbitrarily re-labeling the phase of one
cell j. For any implicit solution method the derivatives of this
flux need to be accounted for in the Jacobian. For good
convergence it is essential that these terms do not oscillate. If
an arbitrary phase is associated with a single-phase
hydrocarbon cell which can flip phase due to small pressure or
compositional change, then this should not cause
discontinuities in the flux, as, physically, all fluid properties
are “smooth” in this region.
The mobility term
The mobility term λc+,α in the dicretisation used here is a cell-
centre quantity, and the value is associated from the upwind
cell. The upwind cell for a particular phase is determined
from the sign of the velocity of phase α , i.e. vij ,α in equation
(2). In the formulation used here, for cell i and phase α , it is
given by
Kkα
λc ,α ,i = xc ,α ,i bc ,i (3)
µα
Consider now the effects of an arbitrary flip of phase for a
single-phase hydrocarbon cell. The molar phase density
xc ,α ,i bc ,i will be re-labeled but retain the same value and
derivatives. That is, the molar density bc ,i is invariant to
phase, and since the state is a single-phase
hydrocarbon, x c ,α ,i = 1, ∀c .
The viscosity term in equation (3), µα , is evaluated
from a correlation which is a function of pressure, temperature
and composition6,7. Consequently if a 100% oil cell is re-
labeled 100% gas, the value and derivatives remain the same.
The problematic terms when considering a phase in equation
(3) are the relative permeabilities kα . These are derived from
user-defined tables. For the purpose of the analysis here,
consider a single-phase hydrocarbon water system. The
characteristics of oil-in-water k row and gas-in-water
k rg curves can be very different, so re-labeling can have
adverse effects on the mobility term.
To estimate the phase of a single-phase hydrocarbon, the
correlation of Li8 is used to approximate the critical
temperature of a mixture. With this temperature the “phase”
can be labeled. That is, define ω = Tcrit . Then
Tres
ω > 1 implies oil like and ω < 1 implies gas like
phases. This correlation has the advantage of being easy and
cheap to calculate, which is important as we need to estimate
the critical temperature for all cells and at all non-linear
iterations of the simulator. To enforce continuity of kα as the
composition moves from oil-to-gas, a simple interpolation
parameter ϖ is introduced where
SPE 79692
kα = ϖ k row ( S ) + (1 − ϖ )k rg ( S
* *
) (4)
oil gas
where
1 for ω > ω oil
 ω −ω

ϖ = for ω gas < ω < ω oil
gas
(5)
 ω oil − ω gas
0 for ω < ω gas
Most importantly, in equation (4) the interpolation is
* *
performed using saturations S gas and S oil that have been end -
point scaled.
The critical endpoints used for the evaluation of relative
permeability are interpolated usingϖ , as can be seen in
Figure 3. The critical “hydrocarbon” relative permiacility is
k rhc = ϖ .S owc + (1 − ϖ ).S gc
This end-point scaling is required to prevent over-
estimation of recovery during water flooding of a near critical
single phase oil.
For example, consider the relative permeability curves in
Figure 3 and an “oil-like” fluid with ϖ close to, but less than
1. Then without end-point scaling, the relative permeability at
low saturations will include a contribution from the k rg term,
making the kα non-zero. Hence the effective critical endpoint
of kα will be close to the gas critical, k rgc . Thus a water
flood of a near critical oil will overestimate the recovery.
End-point scaling will prevent this.
To ensure consistency between the single and 2-phase
hydrocarbon states, this interpolation is also performed in the
2-phase region. Here, this interpolation will only take effect
as the fluid approaches the approximated critical point.
A single-phase hydrocarbon cell will be re-labeled when
ϖ passes through ½, and so from equation (4) the relative
permeability will be continuous there. The difficulties with
this approach are choice of the limits ωoil and ω gas and the
calculation of derivatives of kα ,which now involves end-point
scaling, andϖ which is a function of saturation.
Having established this model the mobility term in a
single-phase hydrocarbon cell, equation (3), is continuous to
phase re-labeling. Indeed the mobility terms in single-phase
hydrocarbon cells are not associated with oil or gas but with
hydrocarbon. The crux of the work done here is to treat these
cells as single-phase hydrocarbon, not as oil or gas. This is
implemented as a 4th phase.
3
Potential difference terms
The potential difference across the interface of cells i and j for
a phase α is given by
vij ,α = (∆Pij + ∆Pc ,ij ,α + ρ α ,ij g∆z ij ) (5)
Each term will be discussed below. Firstly, consider the
gravity density term. Clearly g∆zij is fixed on the grid and
independent of phase. However, the mass density term is a
function of phase. The first question is what happens if
adjoining cells have a phase missing.
In a black-oil model, if phase α is oil or gas we can
take ρα , ij = 1 / 2( ρα ,i + ρα , j ) , which is a reasonable
assumption because we know a good estimate of the density of
a fluid, even if the fluid is absent, via table look-up. In a
compositional model this is not the case. One solution is to
use saturation weighting,
( S α ,i ρ α ,i + ρ α , j S α , j )
ρ α ,ij = . (6)
( S α ,i + S α , j )
This leads to no contribution from cells where a phase is
absent. While solving the problem of absent phases, this
discretisation does lead to discontinuities of a single phase re-
labeling. Suppose in Figure 1 cells i and j are labeled as 100%
oil ( S oil ,i = S oil , j = 1 ). Then the gravity contribution to the
oil potential difference is:
( S oil ,i ρ oil ,i + ρ oil , j S oil , j ) ( ρ oil ,i + ρ oil , j )
= (7)
( S oil ,i + S oil , j ) 2
If cell j was re-labeled as a gas and we assume the flow is
from cell i to cell j, then oil will flow from cell i to cell j due to
up-winding of the mobility. However the gravity contribution
to the oil potential difference reduces to ρ oil,i as S oil , j = 0 .
Now if the densities of the fluids in cell i and cell j are
significantly different this will result in a step change in the oil
potential difference leading, in turn, to a discontinuity in
the flow.
For the IMPES case, this discontinuity is unlikely to have
any effect on the convergence behavior because, for a given
time-step, the phase labeling will be fixed. However, for an
implicit flux term arising from either a fully implicit or AIM
run, this type of discontinuity in the flux may cause severe
convergence difficulties as Newton-Raphson based solvers
typically can’t deal with a discontinuous residual.
At this point let’s re-visit equation (2) and consider the
sum over all phases α to include oil, gas, water, and
hydrocarbon. The mobility calculation in equation (4)
essentially calculates the “hydrocarbon” mobility. An
evaluation of density for the gravity terms in the velocity
calculation, equation (6), is now invariant to sudden phase
4 SPE 79692
changes since S α ,i = S h ,i , the saturation of hydrocarbon.
Hence treating the single-phase hydrocarbon as a separate
phase entirely removes this discontinuity from
single-phase flows.
The non-linearity in the gravity density terms of the flux
are now at the boundaries between cells which have a different
number of phases, which has physical justification. And
rather than leading to a discontinuity in the flows, a change
from one phase to two will be continuous with a change
of gradient.
Capillary pressure terms
The robustness of the capillary terms in equation (5) to a
change of state is now considered. Capillary forces are only
present when two phases exist. In traditional simulators,
however, the capillary part of the potential difference, e.g. the
∆Pc ,ij ,α terms in equation (5), are calculated for a particular
phase. These capillary terms are functions of phase saturation,
and are evaluated by a table look-up. If two neighboring cells
are 100% Oil, then ∆Pc ,ij ,oil = 0 by virtue of the fact
that Pc , j ,oil = Pc ,i ,oil . The difficulty arises in a miscible gas
flood for example, when a 100% oil filled cell is re-labeled to
a 100% gas filled cell, and these terms cause a non-physical
discontinuity in the potential difference term, equation (5).
Here, for all cells with a “single-phase-hydrocarbon”
phase, the capillary terms are set to zero. This is completely
physical as there are not, and should not be, oil-gas capillary
force terms within a single-phase hydrocarbon. One goal here
is that the simulation solution should be invariant to capillary
terms if: (a) there is no mobile water, and (b) all the cells
remain single phase. This is the case for the formulation used
here. The difficulty with this approach is when a single-phase
hydrocarbon cell (say i), neighbors a two-phase cell (say j).
Let us in turn consider the potential difference needed by the
single-phase cell i (i.e. vij ,h ) and the potential differences
needed by the two-phase cell j (i.e. vij ,oil , vij , gas ).
The potential difference term for the single-phase cell i
will be
(
vij ,h = ∆Pij + ρ α ,ij g∆z ij ) (8)
Remembering ρα ,ij is evaluated using equation (6). This
term will be continuous with possible neighboring single-
phase hydrocarbon cells. For the two-phase cell j the potential
difference of oil vij ,oil and gas vij ,oil are
vij ,oil = (∆Pij + ∆Pc ,ij ,oil + ρ oil ,ij g∆z ij )
vij , gas = (∆Pij + ∆Pc ,ij , gas + ρ gas ,ij g∆z ij )
(9)
where again the density is calculated using equation (6).
Capillary terms ∆Pc ,ij ,α depend on the phase labeling of the
single-phase hydrocarbon cell; i.e. whether cells i and j are
straddling a dew or bubble line. The phase labeling problem
here cannot be ignored, and again the correlation of Li8 is used
to estimate a critical temperature of the single-phase cell j
from which a phase choice can be made. Consequently the
phase labeling of single-phase hydrocarbon cells is only
important in the calculation of those potential differences
straddling the single-phase to two-phase cells (i.e. the
simulator must decide between a dew and bubble line).
This need for labeling the single-phase hydrocarbon cells
at the dew and bubble lines is entirely consistent with
the physics.
Quarter Five-Spot case
In the 1st example a quarter-five-spot is considered, on a
10x10x10 grid. Permeability is uniform in each aerial layer.
However, in depth the model represents a highly permeable
layer surrounded above and below with progressively poorer
quality formation; with lower permeability, higher connate
water and higher oil-gas capillary pressure. The cross-section
permeability distribution is illustrated in Figure 4.
This configuration exacerbates the need for a good
treatment of the gravity density term, because after the “light”
injection gas has imbibed into the high permeability layer,
then the situation of heavy “oil-like” hydrocarbon above light
“gas-like” hydrocarbon exists. A consistent treatment of the
gravity density term becomes important. Although this may
seem contrived, this configuration could easily be taken from
many field cases. Figure 2 shows a ternary diagram
illustrating the injection fluid and reservoir fluid. For the
majority of this simulation, first contact miscible conditions
prevail. Nearly all the cells are single-phase hydrocarbon
cells. Other than connate water, the water phase plays no part
in this model. Oil-water, and Oil-gas capillary forces are
specified, which will directly illustrate the need for a
continuous treatment of capillary forces in a single-phase
hydrocarbon environment. Again this case may seem “hand-
picked” to illustrate the point. However, this is a very simple
case, which ought to be straightforward for a simulator.
Two versions of the case are presented. The first has a
zero gas-oil capillary pressure, which demonstrates the effect
of the 4-phase treatment on the density terms only. The
second case includes significant capillary pressures, with
higher capillary pressures in the poorer quality rock.
Figure 5 shows the CPU usage for IMPES, AIM and fully
implicit for the base case, where all cells single phase cells are
labeled “oil” or “gas”. The AIM case is marginally faster than
the IMPES case. Note that all cases converge reasonably well
and completed the simulation. Figure 6 shows the improved
performance of the AIM case running twice as fast due to the
convergence behavior of the 4-phase formulation. Figure 7
demonstrates that the results (gas production), while changing
somewhat, are within engineering accuracy given the differing
time step history. Figure 8 is included to illustrate the
differing time step lengths for the three solution methods.
SPE 79692 5

The second case, with gas-oil capillary pressure, shows

the advantage of the 4-phase treatment far more dramatically.
Figure 9 show the performance of the base runs, with both the

∑∀ F
Implicit and AIM cases essentially failing. When we run the
equivalent cases using the 4-phase treatment, both AIM and
fully implicit cases complete is a respectable time, and, i c c ,ij j
indeed, AIM proves to be the fastest method. So in this
particular case the capillary pressure discontinuities in the base
case essentially prevent the implicit method from working.

Full Field Model

The 4-phase formulation has been tested in a full field
application based on a real case. In reality the reservoir was
occupied by a near critical fluid produced by primary
depletion followed by gas injection later in the field life. This Figure 1 cells in a grid
production scenario was modified to create miscible
conditions by injection gas at day one.

The field contains 52 wells of which 6 are gas injectors. dew line
The simulation model contains 56K active cells and the covers
a period of 5 years. Figure 11 shows the grid and the mole bubble line
fraction of methane at the end of the simulation. This gives an
injection gas
indication of the extent of the injected gas.

CPU performance of three cases is shown in Figure 12.

The three runs are, IMPES, AIM base case and AIM using the reservoir oil
4-phase formulation. The fully implicit treatment of the full
field case is possible, but uncompetitive and consequently not
shown here. In the full field example the improvement in
convergence behavior is less marked than in the quarter-five
spot. However the AIM run time was reduced by over a factor
of two and is slightly faster than the IMPES case.

Figure 13 shows the produced GOR for the whole field

for both the base (AIM) case and the 4-phase formulation
showing the same results to engineering accuracy.
Figure 2: Ternary diagram for miscible gas injection
Conclusions
The introduction of a “4th phase” into the numerical flux term,
along with careful treatment of the mobility terms, has
removed any discontinuities caused by arbitrary labeling of 0.7
single-phase hydrocarbon cells. With this formulation the 0.6
KRG
non-linearities remain at the boundaries between phases, KROW
where they physically exist. Having established a continuous 0.5
KRH
formulation of the flux, this enables a more implicit treatment
0.4
Kh

of miscible injection processes, which, in turn, can lead to a

more rapid and robust numerical method. 0.3
k rhc = ϖ .S owc + (1 − ϖ ).S gc
0.2

0.1

0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8
Sh

Figure 3 An example of the interpolation of rel-perm data

6 SPE 79692

Figure 7: Gas Production Comparison

Figure 4: Quarter Five spot permeability variation

AIM FULLIMP

IMPES

Figure 5: CPU time – Base case, no capillary pressure case Figure 8: Time Step Size

Figure 6: CPU time – Base & 4-phase cases (AIM) Figure 9: CPU time – base case with capillary pressure
SPE 79692 7

Figure 13: GOR full field model, base and 4-phase AIM
Figure 10: IMPES, AIM and Implicit CPU times using the
case
4-phase formulation

Nomenclature
Mc Mass accumulation term for component c
Fc Flux for component c
Qc The well terms for component c
Fi , j Flux between cells i and j.
Ti , j Transmissibility between cells i and j.
λc ,α ,i Generalized Mobility for component c, phase α and
cell i
+
λ Upwind mobility
xc ,α ,i Fraction of component c in phase α for cell j
bc ,i Molar density component c in cell i
µα Viscosity
Figure 11: Field Example: Methane Fraction K Permeability
k row Relative permeability of oil in water
k rg Relative permeability of gas
kα Relative permeability of phase α
S owc Critical oil to water saturation
S gc Critical gas saturation
vij ,α Potential difference between cells i & j for phase α
ρ α ,i Density of phase α in cell i
Pc ,i ,α Capillary pressure for cell i, phase α
∆Pc ,ij ,α Capillary pressure difference between cells i & j
Tcrit Mixture critical temperature
Figure 12: CPU time, showing the improved AIM
performance.
Tres Reservoir (grid block) temperature
8 SPE 79692

Subscripts:

oil oil
gas gas
h single-phase hydrocarbon
c component
α phase

Reference:

1. L. Young, R.F.Russell. “Implementation of an

Adaptive Implicit Method”, 12th SPE Symposium on
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