HR: 1340h
AN: H23G-1698    [Abstracts]
TI: Fractal Viscous Fingering in Fracture Networks
AU: * Boyle, E
EM: eboyle@netl.doe.gov
AF: National Energy Technology Laboratory, 3610 Collins Ferry Road, Morgantown, WV 26507, United States
AU: Sams, W
EM: wsams@netl.doe.gov
AF: National Energy Technology Laboratory, 3610 Collins Ferry Road, Morgantown, WV 26507, United States
AU: Ferer, M
EM: ferer@netl.doe.gov
AF: National Energy Technology Laboratory, 3610 Collins Ferry Road, Morgantown, WV 26507, United States
AU: Ferer, M
EM: ferer@netl.doe.gov
AF: West Virginia Unversity, P.O. Box 6315, Morgantown, WV 26506, United States
AU: Smith, D H
EM: duane.smith@netl.doe.gov
AF: National Energy Technology Laboratory, 3610 Collins Ferry Road, Morgantown, WV 26507, United States
AU: Smith, D H
EM: duane.smith@netl.doe.gov
AF: West Virginia Unversity, P.O. Box 6315, Morgantown, WV 26506, United States
AB: We have used two very different physical models and computer codes to study miscible injection of a low- viscosity fluid into a simple fracture network, where it displaces a much-more viscous "defending" fluid through "rock" that is otherwise impermeable. The one code (NETfLow) is a standard pore level model, originally intended to treat laboratory-scale experiments; it assumes negligible mixing of the two fluids. The other code (NFFLOW) was written to treat reservoir-scale engineering problems; It explicitly treats the flow through the fractures and allows for significant mixing of the fluids at the interface. Both codes treat the fractures as parallel plates, of different effective apertures. Results are presented for the composition profiles from both codes. Independent of the degree of fluid-mixing, the profiles from both models have a functional form identical to that for fractal viscous fingering (i.e., diffusion limited aggregation, DLA). The two codes that solve the equations for different models gave similar results; together they suggest that the injection of a low-viscosity fluid into large- scale fracture networks may be much more significantly affected by fractal fingering than previously illustrated.
DE: 1805 Computational hydrology
DE: 1847 Modeling
DE: 1869 Stochastic hydrology
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting