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Development of a refinement criterion for adaptive mesh refinement in steam-assisted gravity drainage simulation

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Abstract

Steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) is an enhanced oil recovery process for heavy oils and bitumens. Numerical simulations of this thermal process allow us to estimate the retrievable volume of oil and to evaluate the benefits of the project. As there exists a thin flow interface (compared to the reservoir dimensions), SAGD simulations are sensitive to the grid size. Thus, to obtain precise forecasts of oil production, very small-sized cells have to be used, which leads to prohibitive CPU times. To reduce these computation times, one can use an adaptive mesh refinement technique, which will only refine the grid in the interface area and use coarser cells outside. To this end, in this work, we introduce new refinement criteria, which are based on the work achieved in Kröner and Ohlberger (Math Comput 69(229):25–39, 2000) on a posteriori error estimators for finite volume schemes for hyperbolic equations. Through numerical experiments, we show that they enable us to decrease in a significant way the number of cells (and then CPU times) while maintaining a good accuracy in the results.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Direction Ingénierie de Réservoir, IFP, R032, 1-4 avenue bois préau, 92852, Rueil-Malmaison, France

    Magnolia Mamaghani & Guillaume Enchéry

  2. Laboratoire de Mathématiques, Clermont Université, Université Blaise Pascal, BP10448, 63000, Clermont Ferrand, France

    Claire Chainais-Hillairet

  3. CNRS, UMR 6620, Laboratoire de Mathématiques, 63177, Aubière Cedex, France

    Claire Chainais-Hillairet

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  1. Magnolia Mamaghani
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  2. Guillaume Enchéry
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  3. Claire Chainais-Hillairet
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Correspondence to Magnolia Mamaghani.

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Mamaghani, M., Enchéry, G. & Chainais-Hillairet, C. Development of a refinement criterion for adaptive mesh refinement in steam-assisted gravity drainage simulation. Comput Geosci 15, 17–34 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10596-010-9192-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10596-010-9192-4

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