Linear stability analysis and CFD simulation of thermal viscous fingering instability in anisotropic porous media

Norouzi, M, Dorrani, S, Shokri, H and Beg, OA ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5925-6711 2021, 'Linear stability analysis and CFD simulation of thermal viscous fingering instability in anisotropic porous media' , Journal of Engineering Mechanics, 147 (4) , 04021006.

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Abstract

The water or steam injection in oil fields is a usual method for enhanced oil recovery in petroleum engineering. The thermo-viscous fingering instability is one of the main problems with complex nature that decreases the efficiency of oil extraction. Actually, the oil wells are the porous medium with a level of anisotropy for permeability and diffusion. In this paper, the thermal viscous fingering instability in anisotropic media has been investigated using both linear stability analysis and CFD simulation. For stability analysis, the growth rate of disturbances is determined by solving quasi-steady state equations via shooting method. The CFD simulation is performed by solving the governing equations of heat and mass transfer using a spectral method. It is shown that the longitudinal direction permeability and the transverse direction dispersion have important effect on the instability. The value of thermal-lag coefficient and the Lewis number have opposite effects on the different types of displacements that are considered. For the case of sweeping the porous media via the cold fluid, increasing the Lewis number intensifies the level of flow instability.

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