In order to solve the current energy crises there are a couple of options. In this project we consider two of them: better use of current oil and gas reservoirs and the underground storage of CO2 in empty oil/gas reservoirs. In both applications there are a number of challenges. We will describe these challenges in the next paragraphs.
It is well known that in current oil reservoirs only 20-30% of the oil and gas is exploited. The remainder of the content can not be obtained with standard techniques. In order to obtain also the remaining part, Enhanced Oil Recovery methods are used. One of them is the fracking of the reservoir. However in this technique problems occur: there can be a significant increase in the costs, the surrounding environment can be damaged (including contamination of ground water, risks to air quality etc.), and dangerous gases can escape.
With respect to CO2 storage, it is important to know that CO2 has a higher density than air. This implies that if CO2 is leaking from the reservoir into the atmosphere the air in the neighborhood of the CO2 storage is replaced by CO2. This is very very dangerous because without air both humans and animals will die in a couple of minutes. This danger was one of the reasons that an experiment of CO2 storage in the Dutch city of Barendrecht has to be stopped because the population of the city was afraid of the phenomenon and organized a big protest such that the experiment is canceled.
In this project the aim is to help the oil and gas industry, government and the population by increasing our knowledge of porous media flow when the reservoir contain many fractures. The current knowledge (physics, mathematics and computer science) is able to understand oil flow in reservoirs with a small number of large fractures. However we are not able yet to simulate the flow of fluids in a fractured reservoir (including many small fractures). In order to solve this problem a couple of scientific domains have to be developed.
During the project a literature study of the newest mesh free methods has been done. After that also the most modern iterative methods for solving a large set of (non) linear equations have been studied. The results of these studies have been partially published in progress reports. A start has been made to investigate the mesh free methods. The aim was to presents this at the ECMOR 2018 XVI conference in Barcelona. However due to a slow progress of the PhD student we miss the deadline to deliver the proceedings, so we were not able to attend this conference and present our results.
