Simulation of water and gas flow in fractured porous media

Abdelaziz L. Al-Khlaifat & Hamid Arastoopour

The porous media considered in this paper belong to gas reservoirs characterized by a low-permeability matrix,  combined with a high-permeability fracture system. The transient, three-dimensional, two-phase numerical model  is presented for simulating the simultaneous flow of gas and water through porous and fractured media. The specific  problem to which the numerical simulation is applied assumes a single horizontal fracture perpendicular to the flow  direction in a quite small geometry. The equations solved treat both fluids as incompressible and immiscible.  Accounted for are the effect of capillary pressure and relative permeability. Technically, the finite volume approach  is used to discretize the equations. The set of discretized and linearized equations is solved using the IPSA  (inter-phase slip algorithm) method. The results of this study indicate that the multi-layer reservoir provides better estimates of post-fracture performance compared to a more conventional, single-layer reservoir description