Fully-implicit simulation of vertical-equilibrium models with hysteresis and capillary fringe

Abstract

Geological carbon storage represents a new and substantial challenge for the subsurface geosciences. To increase understanding and make good engineering decisions, containment processes and large-scale storage operations must be simulated in a thousand year perspective. A hierarchy of models of increasing computational complexity for analysis and simulation of large-scale CO2 storage has been implemented as a separate module of the open-source Matlab Reservoir Simulation Toolbox (MRST). This paper describes a general family of two-scale models available in this module. The models consist of two-dimensional flow equations formulated in terms of effective quantities obtained from hydrostatic reconstructions of vertical pressure and saturation distributions. The corresponding formulation is fully implicit and is the first to give a mass-conservative treatment and include general (non-linearized) CO2 properties. In particular, the models account for compressibility, dissolution, and hysteresis effects in the fine-scale capillary and relative permeability functions and can be used to accurately and efficiently study the combined large-scale and long-term effects of structural, residual, and solubility trapping.