A Computational Scheme for Fluid Flow and Heat Transfer Analysis in Porous Media for Recovery of Oil and Gas

Abstract A finite-element scheme has been formulated, which is capable of solving transient analysis of both conductive and convective heat transfers due to fluid flow in porous media. The model also includes the latent heat effect to consider the phase change aspect of a frozen medium. To test the validity of the model, it was applied to six cases for which analytical solutions are available. The test cases cover (i) single-phase fluid flow through porous media, (ii) radial conduction with and without phase change, (iii) conductive and convective heat transfer in an aquifer, and (iv) two-phase immiscible flow in porous media. In all these cases, good agreement with analytical solutions are observed validating the computational scheme. This computational scheme should be useful in solving frozen ground problems, thermal stimulation technique for natural gas recovery from hydrates, and single-phase and two-phase convective heat transfer problems in enhanced oil recovery scheme in petroleum engineering.