Calculating the Anisotropic Permeability of Porous Media Using the Lattice Boltzmann Method and X-ray Computed Tomography

A lattice Boltzmann (LB) method is developed in this article in a combination with X-ray computed tomography to simulate fluid flow at pore scale in order to calculate the anisotropic permeability of porous media. The binary 3D structures of porous materials were acquired by X-ray computed tomography at a resolution of a few microns, and the reconstructed 3D porous structures were then combined with the LB model to calculate their permeability tensor based on the simulated velocity field at pore scale. The flow is driven by pressure gradients imposed in different directions. Two porous media, one gas diffusion porous layer used in fuel cells industry and glass beads, were simulated. For both media, we investigated the relationship between their anisotropic permeability and porosity. The results indicate that the LB model is efficient to simulate pore-scale flow in porous media, and capable of giving a good estimate of the anisotropic permeability for both media. The calculated permeability is in good agreement with the measured date; the relationship between the permeability and porosity for the two media is well described by the Kozeny–Carman equation. For the gas diffusion layer, the simulated results showed that its permeability in one direction could be one order of magnitude higher than those in other two directions. The simulation was based on the single-relaxation time LB model, and we showed that by properly choosing the relaxation time, it could give similar results to those obtained using the multiple-relaxation time (MRT) LB method, but with only one third of the computational costs of MRTLB model.     

Knudsen’s Permeability Correction for Tight Porous Media

Various flow regimes including Knudsen, transition, slip and viscous flows (Darcy’s law), as applied to flow of natural gas through porous conventional rocks, tight formations and shale systems, are investigated. Data from the Mesaverde formation in the United States are used to demonstrate that the permeability correction factors range generally between 1 and 10. However, there are instances where the corrections can be between 10 and 100 for gas flow with high Knudsen number in the transition flow regime, and especially in the Knudsen’s flow regime. The results are of practical interest as gas permeability in porous media can be more complex than that of liquid. The gas permeability is influenced by slippage of gas, which is a pressure-dependent parameter, commonly referred to as Klinkenberg’s effect. This phenomenon plays a substantial role in gas flow through porous media, especially in unconventional reservoirs with low permeability, such as tight sands, coal seams, and shale formations. A higher-order permeability correlation for gas flow called Knudsen’s permeability is studied. As opposed to Klinkenberg’s correlation, which is a first-order equation, Knudsen’s correlation is a second-order approximation. Even higher-order equations can be derived based on the concept used in developing this model. A plot of permeability correction factor versus Knudsen number gives a typecurve. This typecurve can be used to generalize the permeability correction in tight porous media. We conclude that Knudsen’s permeability correlation is more accurate than Klinkenberg’s model especially for extremely tight porous media with transition and free molecular flow regimes. The results from this study indicate that Klinkenberg’s model and various extensions developed throughout the past years underestimate the permeability correction especially for the case of fluid flow with the high Knudsen number.     

Prediction of Non-Darcy Coefficients for Inertial Flows Through the Castlegate Sandstone Using Image-Based Modeling

Near wellbore flow in high rate gas wells shows the deviation from Darcy??s law that is typical for high Reynolds number flows, and prediction requires an accurate estimate of the non-Darcy coefficient (?? factor). This numerical investigation addresses the issues of predicting non-Darcy coefficients for a realistic porous media. A CT-image of real porous medium (Castlegate Sandstone) was obtained at a resolution of 7.57???m. The segmented image provides a voxel map of pore-grain space that is used as the computational domain for the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) based flow simulations. Results are obtained for pressure-driven flow in the above-mentioned porous media in all directions at increasing Reynolds number to capture the transition from the Darcy regime as well as quantitatively predict the macroscopic parameters such as absolute permeability and ?? factor (Forchheimer coefficient). Comparison of numerical results against experimental data and other existing correlations is also presented. It is inferred that for a well-resolved realistic porous media images, LBM can be a useful computational tool for predicting macroscopic porous media properties such as permeability and ?? factor.     

A LGA model for fluid flow in heterogeneous porous media

A lattice gas automaton (LGA) model is proposed to simulate fluid flow in heterogeneous porous media. Permeability fields are created by distributing scatterers (solids, grains) within the fluid flow field. These scatterers act as obstacles to flow. The loss in momentum of the fluid is directly related to the permeability of the lattice gas model. It is shown that by varying the probability of occurrence of solid nodes, the permeability of the porous medium can be changed over several orders of magnitude. To simulate fluid flow in heterogeneous permeability fields, isotropic, anisotropic, random, and correlated permeability fields are generated. The lattice gas model developed here is then used to obtain the effective permeability as well as the local fluid flow field. The method presented here can be used to simulate fluid flow in arbitrarily complex heterogeneous porous media.     

Low Pressure Gas Percolation Characteristic in Ultra-low Permeability Porous Media

Low pressure gas percolation characteristic in ultra-low permeability porous media is investigated in this article through core flow experiments. The results show that the wall-slip layer covers more than 10% of the average porous channel radius on account of minimum pore size when the permeability is below 0.1 × 10^?3μ m ² order, and seepage behavior is contrasted to that in mid-high permeability pore media. When the gas pressure is not high enough, the flow regime turns into transitional flow instead of slip flow, and nonlinear relationship between the measured gas permeability and the reciprocal of average pressure exists. The gas measuring permeability experiment would be influenced by the non-linear relationship. If Klinkenberg-corrected method is applied to speculate the equivalent liquid permeability, the extrapolated value will become less or minus. Simultaneously, actual gas flow velocity at the outlet is beyond the calculated value with Klinkenberg formula. A new gas seepage model based on the general slip boundary condition is derived from the homogenization technique in this article. At last the flow model is examined to be suitable for representing the gas flow behavior in ultra-low permeability media and estimating the absolute permeability from single-point, steady-states measurements.     

Mass flow rate prediction of pressure–temperature-driven gas flows through micro/nanoscale channels

In this paper, we study mass flow rate of rarefied gas flow through micro/nanoscale channels under simultaneous thermal and pressure gradients using the direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method. We first compare our DSMC solutions for mass flow rate of pure temperature-driven flow with those of Boltzmann-Krook-Walender equation and Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook solutions. Then, we focus on pressure–temperature-driven flows. The effects of different parameters such as flow rarefaction, channel pressure ratio, wall temperature gradient and flow bulk temperature on the thermal mass flow rate of the pressure–temperature-driven flow are examined. Based on our analysis, we propose a correlated relation that expresses normalized mass flow rate increment due to thermal creep as a function of flow rarefaction, normalized wall temperature gradient and pressure ratio over a wide range of Knudsen number. We examine our predictive relation by simulation of pressure-driven flows under uniform wall heat flux (UWH) boundary condition. Walls under UWH condition have non-uniform temperature distribution, that is, thermal creep effects exist. Our investigation shows that developed analytical relation could predict mass flow rate of rarefied pressure-driven gas flows under UWH condition at early transition regime, that is, up to Knudsen numbers of 0.5.     

高温高压气体在低含水率介质中迁移的数值模拟

针对气液两相非等温渗流模型高度非线性的特点,发展了适宜的数值离散方法。根据相态转换准则和控制方程的性质,采用最低饱和度法简化算法。空间离散方面,使用有限体积法;时间离散方面,设计了一套包含合理求解顺序的Picard迭代法,解决了方程组强耦合的问题。利用上述数值方法对高温高压气体的迁移行为进行数值模拟,证明了气体在低含水率介质和等效孔隙度的干燥介质内的运动基本一致,并分析了空腔内的气液相态转变过程。在此基础上,研究了多孔介质孔隙度和渗透率对气体压强演化和示踪气体迁移的影响。研究表明,孔隙度越小（相同渗透率）、渗透率越高（相同孔隙度）,示踪气体的迁移距离越远,并给出了估算不同孔隙度和渗透率下迁移距离的半经验公式。     

Analytical Solutions to Gas Flow Problems in Low Permeability Porous Media

In most of conventional porous media the flow of gas is basically controlled by the permeability and the contribution of gas flow due to gas diffusion is ignored. The diffusion effect may have significant impact on gas flow behavior, especially in low permeability porous media. In this study, a dual mechanism based on Darcy flow as well as diffusion is presented for the gas flow in homogeneous porous media. Then, a novel form of pseudo pressure function was defined. This study presents a set of novel analytical solutions developed for analyzing steady-state and transient gas flow through porous media including effective diffusion. The analytical solutions are obtained using the real gas pseudo pressure function that incorporates the effective diffusion. Furthermore, the conventional assumption was used for linearizing the gas flow equation. As application examples, the new analytical solutions have been used to design new laboratory and field testing method to determine the porous media parameters. The proposed laboratory analysis method is also used to analyze data from steady-state flow tests of three core plugs. Then, permeability (k) and effective diffusion coefficient (D _e) was determined; however, the new method allows one to analyze data from both transient and steady-state tests in various flow geometries.     

DSMC方法与稀薄气流计算的发展

直接模拟ＭｏｎｔｅＣａｒｌｏ（ＤＳＭＣ）方法是依赖物理的概率模拟方法．在求解过渡领域流动的众多解析、数值和模拟方法中,目前只有ＤＳＭＣ方法是可以模拟三维复杂真实气体流动的方法．从宏观参量到细观速度分布函数的水平上,该方法均能得到实验的支持．本文综述了ＤＳＭＣ方法的最近发展,包括我们在检验模型、处理内能松弛模拟和化学反应模拟以及求解三维绕流的通用方法等方面的工作。      

Pore-Scale Simulation of Shear Thinning Fluid Flow Using Lattice Boltzmann Method

The present work attempts to identify the roles of flow and geometric variables on the scaling factor which is a necessary parameter for modeling the apparent viscosity of non-Newtonian fluid in porous media. While idealizing the porous media microstructure as arrays of circular and square cylinders, the present study uses multi-relaxation time lattice Boltzmann method to conduct pore-scale simulation of shear thinning non-Newtonian fluid flow. Variation in the size and inclusion ratio of the solid cylinders generates wide range of porous media with varying porosity and permeability. The present study also used stochastic reconstruction technique to generate realistic, random porous microstructures. For each case, pore-scale fluid flow simulation enables the calculation of equivalent viscosity based on the computed shear rate within the pores. It is observed that the scaling factor has strong dependence on porosity, permeability, tortuosity and the percolation threshold, while approaching the maximum value at the percolation threshold porosity. The present investigation quantifies and proposes meaningful correlations between the scaling factor and the macroscopic properties of the porous media.     

复杂微通道气体流动的格子Boltzmann模拟

构建了一个模拟复杂微通道内气体流动的多松弛格子Boltzmann模型。该模型采用动力学曲面滑移边界,考虑了微尺度效应和努森层影响。此外,为了更准确地描述微通道内气体的滑移速度,在模型中引入孔隙局部Kn数来代替平均Kn数。之后采用Poiseuille流对模型进行验证,模拟结果与用直接模拟蒙特卡洛方法和分子模拟结果吻合较好,证明了该模型模拟微通道内处于滑移区和过渡区气体流动的有效性。最后,采用该模型模拟多孔介质内气体渗流过程。结果表明,随着孔隙平均Kn数的增加,多孔介质内的高渗区域增加,且优先从小孔隙中开始增加,这是由于小孔隙中微尺度效应更加明显,相对大孔隙流动阻力更小所致。     

Application of the lattice‐Boltzmann method to study flow and dispersion in channels with and without expansion and contraction geometry

The lattice‐Boltzmann (LB) method, derived from lattice gas automata, is a relatively new technique for studying transport problems. The LB method is investigated for its accuracy to study fluid dynamics and dispersion problems. Two problems of relevance to flow and dispersion in porous media are addressed: (i) Poiseuille flow between parallel plates (which is analogous to flow in pore throats in two‐dimensional porous networks), and (ii) flow through an expansion–contraction geometry (which is analogous to flow in pore bodies in two‐dimensional porous networks). The results obtained from the LB simulations are compared with analytical solutions when available, and with solutions obtained from a finite element code (FIDAP) when analytical results are not available. Excellent agreement is found between the LB results and the analytical/FIDAP solutions in most cases, indicating the utility of the lattice‐Boltzmann method for solving fluid dynamics and dispersion problems. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Empirical slip and viscosity model performance for microscale gas flow

For the simple geometries of Couette and Poiseuille flows, the velocity profile maintains a similar shape from continuum to free molecular flow. Therefore, modifications to the fluid viscosity and slip boundary conditions can improve the continuum based Navier–Stokes solution in the non‐continuum non‐equilibrium regime. In this investigation, the optimal modifications are found by a linear least‐squares fit of the Navier–Stokes solution to the non‐equilibrium solution obtained using the direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method. Models are then constructed for the Knudsen number dependence of the viscosity correction and the slip model from a database of DSMC solutions for Couette and Poiseuille flows of argon and nitrogen gas, with Knudsen numbers ranging from 0.01 to 10. Finally, the accuracy of the models is measured for non‐equilibrium cases both in and outside the DSMC database. Flows outside the database include: combined Couette and Poiseuille flow, partial wall accommodation, helium gas, and non‐zero convective acceleration. The models reproduce the velocity profiles in the DSMC database within an L₂ error norm of 3% for Couette flows and 7% for Poiseuille flows. However, the errors in the model predictions outside the database are up to five times larger. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Burnett simulations of gas flow in microchannels

The Burnett equations with slip boundary conditions are used to model the gas flow in microchannels in transition flow regime. As the Navier-Stokes equations are not appropriate to model the gas flow in this regime, the higher-order Burnett equations are adopted in the present study. In earlier studies, convergent solutions of the Burnett equations of microPoiseuille flow could only be obtained when Knudsen number is less than 0.2. By using a relaxation method on the boundary values, convergent solutions of the Burnett equations can be obtained even when Knudsen number reaches 0.4. The solutions of Burnett equations agree very well with experimental data and direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) results. The pressure distributions and velocity profiles are then discussed in detail.     

An overview on nonlinear porous flow in low permeability porous media

This paper gives an overview on nonlinear porous flow in low permeability porous media, reveals the microscopic mechanisms of flows, and clarifies properties of porous flow fluids. It shows that, deviating from Darcy's linear law, the porous flow characteristics obey a nonlinear law in a low-permeability porous medium, and the viscosity of the porous flow fluid and the permeability values of water and oil are not constants. Based on these characters, a new porous flow model, which can better describe low permeability reservoir, is established. This model can describe various patterns of porous flow, as Darcy's linear law does. All the parameters involved in the model, having definite physical meanings, can be obtained directly from the experiments.     

Navier-Stokes方程二阶速度滑移边界条件的检验

对微尺度气体流动,Navier-Stokes方程和一阶速度滑移边界条件的结果与实验数据相比,在滑移区相互符合,在过渡领域则显著偏离.为改善Navier-Stokes方程在过渡领域的表现,有些研究者尝试引入二阶速度滑移边界条件,如Cercignani模型,Deissler模型和Beskok-Karniadakis模型.以微槽道气体流动为例,将Navier-Stokes方程在不同的二阶速度滑移模型下的结果与动理论的直接模拟Monte Carlo(DSMC)方法和信息保存(IP)方法以及实验数据进行比较.在所考察的3种具有代表性的二阶速度滑移模型中,Cercignani模型表现最好,其所给出的质量流率在Knudsen数为0.4时仍与DSMC和IP结果相符;然而,细致比较表明,Cercignani模型给出的物面滑移速度及其附近的速度分布在滑流区和过渡领域的分界处(Kn=0.1)已明显偏离DSMC和IP的结果.     

Lattice Boltzmann modeling of transport phenomena in fuel cells and flow batteries

Fuel cells and flow batteries are promising technologies to address climate change and air pollution problems. An understanding of the complex multiscale and multiphysics transport phenomena occurring in these electrochemical systems requires powerful numerical tools. Over the past decades, the lattice Boltzmann(LB) method has attracted broad interest in the computational fluid dynamics and the numerical heat transfer communities, primarily due to its kinetic nature making it appropriate for modeling complex multiphase transport phenomena. More importantly, the LB method fits well with parallel computing due to its locality feature, which is required for large-scale engineering applications. In this article, we review the LB method for gas–liquid two-phase flows, coupled fluid flow and mass transport in porous media, and particulate flows. Examples of applications are provided in fuel cells and flow batteries. Further developments of the LB method are also outlined.     

Flow Regimes in Packed Beds of Spheres from Pre-Darcy to Turbulent

Characteristics of flow regimes in porous media, along the processes of energy dissipation in each regime, are critical for applications of such media. The current work presents new experimental data for water flow in packed steel spheres of 1- and 3-mm diameters. The porosity of the porous media was about 35 % for both cases. The extensive dataset covered a broad range of flow Reynolds number such that several important flow regimes were encountered, including the elusive pre-Darcy regime, which is rarely or never seen in porous-media literature and turbulent regime. When compared to previous information, the results of this study are seen to add to the divergence of available data on pressure drop in packed beds of spheres. The divergence was also present in the coefficients of Ergun equation and in the Kozeny–Carman constant. The porous media of the current work were seen to exhibit different values of permeability and Forchheimer coefficient in each flow regime. The current data correlated well using the friction factor based on the permeability (measured in the Darcy regime) and the Reynolds number based on the same length scale. An attempt was made to apply recent theoretical results regarding the applicability of the quadratic and cubic Forchheimer corrections in the strong and weak inertia regime.