title: Lattice Boltzmann modeling of permeability in porous materials with partially percolating voxels.
abstract: A partial-bounce-back lattice Boltzmann model has been used to simulate flow on a lattice consisting of cubic voxels with a locally varying effective percolating fraction. The effective percolating fraction of a voxel is the total response to the partial-bounce-back techniques for porous media flow due to subvoxel fine structures. The model has been verified against known analytic solutions on two- and three-dimensional regular geometries, and has been applied to simulate flow and permeabilities of two real-world rock samples. This enables quantitative determination of permeability for problems where voxels cannot be adequately segmented as discrete compositions. The voxel compositions are represented as volume fractions of various material phases and void. The numerical results have shown that, for the tight-sandstone sample, the bulk permeability is sensitive to the effective percolating fraction of calcite. That is, the subvoxel flow paths in the calcite phase are important for bulk permeability. On the other hand, flow in the calcite phase in the sandstone sample makes an insignificant contribution to the bulk permeability. The calculated permeability value for the sandstone sample is up to two orders of magnitude greater than the tight sandstone. This model is generic and could be applied to other oil and gas reservoir media or to material samples.
authors.affiliation: North University of China, School of Information & Communication Engineering, Xueyuan Road 3, Taiyuan, Shanxi Province 030051, China.
authors.forename: Ruru
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: CSIRO, Private Bag 33, Clayton, Vic 3169, Australia.
authors.forename: Y Sam
authors.initials: YS
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Shanxi Key Laboratory of Signal Capturing and Processing, North University of China, Xueyuan Road 3, Taiyuan, Shanxi Province 030051, China.
authors.forename: Jinxiao
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Pan
authors.affiliation: CSIRO, Private Bag 33, Clayton, Vic 3169, Australia.
authors.forename: Gerald G
authors.initials: GG
authors.lastname: Pereira
authors.affiliation: CSIRO, G.P.O. Box 664, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia.
authors.forename: John A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Taylor
authors.affiliation: CSIRO, P.O. Box 1130, Bentley, WA6102, Australia.
authors.forename: Ben
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Clennell
authors.affiliation: Research Institute of Petroleum Exploration & Development (RIPED), PetroChina, P. O. Box 910, No. 20 Xueyuan Road, Haidian District, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Caineng
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Zou
mesh_terms: D002119:Calcium Carbonate / Q000737:chemistry; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D010539:Permeability; D016062:Porosity
chemical_list: D002119:Calcium Carbonate