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Effect of Initial Pressure, Surface, Outlet Velocity, and Density of Adsorbed Gas on Transport and Production in Shale Gas Reservoirs

Balumi WB* and Aminu MD

The recent technological advancements in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have led to a boom in gas production from unconventional shale gas reservoirs. However, knowledge and technologies required to successfully develop unconventional reservoirs are far beyond what is available in the industry at present. Shale gas reservoirs are extremely heterogeneous with ultra-low permeability and nano-pores. The flow of gas in this reservoir is non-linear, multi-faceted including adsorption/desorption, flow at high and low rates, solid-fluid interactions, etc., which makes it a significant challenge to quantify such flow. A pore-scale flow model was developed using a combination of CFD and COMSOL multi-physics 4.2 based on Darcy and Navier-Stokes equations to describe transport of adsorbed gas and free gas in pore spaces respectively. Parameters such as surface pressure, adsorbed gas density and initial reservoir pressure were used to study shale gas transport. The presence of adsorbed gas within the shale gas reservoir will decrease porosity while increasing total production and gas storage capacity due to the high affinity of surfaces of organic matter to methane found within the shale gas reservoirs and hence high gas-in-place estimates. Moreover, because production from the adsorbed gas phase is dependent on pressure, four different values of initial reservoir pressures were used to analyze the effect of reservoir pressure on flow velocity. It was observed that the higher the initial reservoir pressure, the greater the velocity of the flow and consequently higher production rates.