Browsing by Author "Cai, Weihua"

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Miscible density-driven flows in heterogeneous porous media: Influences of correlation length and distribution of permeability
(2019-01-04)
Li, Qian
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Cai, Weihua
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Li, Feng-Chen
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Li, Bingxi
;
Chen, Ching-Yao
A random process and highly accurate pseudospectral method associated with compact finite differences are incorporated to evaluate effects of permeability heterogeneity to gravity-driven miscible porous media flows. Flows in heterogeneous permeability fields, based on multiple sets of random realizations with identical statistical characteristics, are simulated to elucidate the global trend of mean quantities and local variations. The presence of heterogeneity provokes more prominent fingering competition and greater variation of fingers' widths, hence the mean values of interested quantitative measures, i.e., breakthrough time, amount of fluid volumes transported, and normalized mixing effectiveness, are generally reduced. Resonant effects, whose influences on the flow fields are the most significant, are verified to occur in an intermediate correlation length, in which the widths of fingers are slightly less than the correspondent correlation length. Nevertheless, under the resonant conditions these measures are the most widely scattered between different random realizations associated with the same control parameters. The widest scatterings are mainly because of the enhancing sensitivity of flow path selections under such resonant conditions, especially in a few realizations whose high or low permeability regions align along with or transverse to the main flow direction. The significant scatterings of these quantitative measures, which had drawn little attention previously, suggest more cautious treatments for practical implementations in the regime of resonant effects.
The impact of heterogeneous anisotropy of porous media on density-driven convection
(2019-09-26)
Li, Qian
;
Cai, Weihua
;
Tang, Xiaojing
;
Chen, Yicheng
;
Li, Bingxi
Purpose The aim of this study is to numerically simulate the density-driven convection in heterogeneous porous media associated with anisotropic permeability field, which is important to the safe and stable long term CO2 storage in laminar saline aquifers. Design/methodology/approach The study uses compact finite difference and the pseudospectral method to solve Darcy's law. Findings The presence of heterogeneous anisotropy may result in non-monotonic trend of the breakthrough time and quantity of CO2 dissolved in the porous medium, which are important to the CO2 underground storage. Originality/value The manuscript numerically study the convective phenomena of mixture contained CO2 and brine. The phenomena are important to the process of CO2 enhanced oil recovery. Interesting qualitative patterns and quantitative trends are revealed in the manuscript.