Abstract
The abundant nanopore throats of shale formations significantly influence the transport of gas in shale reservoirs. The critical pressure of shale gas to transport through water-saturated pore-throats is a key parameter to evaluate gas transport properties and is crucial for the production of shale gas and preservation of conventional gas reservoir. Due to the strong confining effects of abundant nanopore throats of shale formations, the mechanism for gas breakthrough pressure has yet to be fully revealed, and thus, it is hard to predict the breakthrough pressure of gas transport in nanopore-throat. To learn more, we employed both equilibrium and nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the methane transport behavior during the gas breakthrough process in nanopore throats filled with brine under reservoir conditions. The results suggest that the critical pressure driving fluid transport through pore-throat systems is precisely determined by the confinement effects of the pore-throat. In addition, we discussed the correlations of breakthrough pressure with the size and geometry of pore-throat. Furthermore, a gas breakthrough pressure model was proposed to describe the breakthrough mechanism of shale gas transport in pore-throat systems, which may provide a new perspective on shale gas breakthrough pressures.
Article Highlights
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Pressure-driven transport of methane-brine fluid through nanosize pore-throats has been investigated at an atomistic level.
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Shale gas breakthrough pressure is influenced significantly by the width of the pore-throat as well as pore geometry.
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A conceptacle model has been proposed from the simulation results to describe the gas breakthrough mechanism in shale pore systems.
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Data Availability
Computational method and details for this research are described in methods. All simulations were performed using the Large-scale Atomic/Molecular Massively Parallel Simulator simulation package (LAMMPS) which is available at https://www.lammps.org/. The datasets presented in this manuscript are available in the Figshare repository (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.21971303).
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We acknowledge the Major National Science and Technology Project of China (Grant No. 2016ZX05002-006-005 and 2017ZX05036-002-008) and National Science Foundation of China (Nos. 42172050, 41802142 and 41425009). We are also grateful to the High-Performance Computing Center (HPCC) of Nanjing University for doing the calculations on its blade cluster system.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Yongxiancheng, Xiancai Lu, Xiandong Liu, Qin Li and Ming Fan. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Yongxian Cheng, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Cheng, Y., Lu, X., Li, Q. et al. Breakthrough Pressure Model of Shale Gas in Water-Saturated Nanopore-Throat Systems: Insights from Molecular Simulations. Transp Porous Med 150, 735–752 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11242-023-02030-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11242-023-02030-3