Flow in Porous Media

M. Tyagi, J. Reichold, Professorship P. Jenny

An idealized porous medium can be regarded as a network

of tiny connected tubes. For small Reynolds numbers (of
the order one), Darcy's law, which relates mass flow and
pressure gradient at the continuum scale can be derived.
Based on this simple relationship, mass balance leads to
an equation for pressure in the domain of interest.

Multiphase Flow
For multiphase flow, empirical correction coefficients, which
depend on fluid-phase saturations, were introduced. The
resulting system of governing equations is typically solved Fig. 2
by finite volume or finite difference schemes. However,
The goal of the present work is to derive and implement
more complex physical processes, which cannot be
appropriate Lagrangian models for the phase particle
described locally, are difficult to model in such an Eulerian
evolutions, to perform a time scale analysis and finally to
framework. This gave rise to the development of a
suggest equivalent models for commercial finite volume
Lagrangian method, where computational particles
subsurface flow simulators.
represent infinitesimal fluid-phase volumes and evolve such
that their statistics represents the statistics of the physical So far, the Lagrangian modeling framework was developed
fluid phases (see Fig. 1). This approach allows to model and validated for standard two phase flow in homogenous
various phenomena related to multiphase flow in porous and heterogeneous media. Fig. 3 depicts the saturation
media in an alternative way and in some cases is more contours obtained with particle method (SPM) and finite
natural. volume method (FVM). Fig. 4 shows the particle distribution
of injected phase.

Fig. 3 Saturation contours Fig. 4 Particle distribution of

Fig. 1
Example: CO2 Storage in Geological Formations
CO2 is one of the major greenhouse gasses responsible for
global warming. One of the most promising technologies,
which might help to reduce this problem is CO2
sequestration. This involves separation of CO2 from flue
gas or fuel and subsequent injection and storage in
subsurface formations. Fig. 1 shows a sketch of a possible
scenario, where CO2 is captured from the flue gas coming
out of the power plant and pressurized to supercritical state.
The pressurized CO2 can be stored in a saline aquifer or
can be used for enhanced oil recovery.
In order to operate CO2 storage sites at a large scale, it is
important to properly understand the time scales associated
with the various storage mechanisms, e.g. due to
mechanical and residual trapping, dissolution and chemical
reactions with the rock. Here, the stochastic particle method
can be used to link the statistics resulting from pore scale
physics to the macroscopic dynamics of fluid phases and
compositions.
injected phase
Multi-Scale Modeling
In most realistic cases, the medium containing the fluid
phases is heterogeneous and is characterized by large
permeability contrast and a huge range of length scales. As
for example in turbulent flows, even the smallest scales are
relevant for the macroscopic behavior of the system.
Therefore, such problems are an ideal target for multi-scale
methods.
Example: Blood Flow in Vascular
Networks
The mechanisms responsible for the
blood flow regulation in the human brain
are of central importance, but are still
poorly understood. Here, the goal is to
build a multiscale modeling framework for
blood flow in capillary networks as
depicted in Fig. 5. The large vessels are
directly represented while the small ones
Fig. 5 Vascular are treated as a continuous porous
network medium.