2.1. Generalized Navier–Stokes Equations
Owing to the nano/micron-sized porous media considered in the present work, the pressure difference in these porous media under gas-reservoir conditions is so small that the flow can be considered incompressible flow in simulations. Recently, the generalized Navier–Stokes equations proposed by Nithiarasu et al. [
15] have been widely used to study the isotheral incompressible flow in porous media, which can be expressed as follows:
where
is the volume-averaged velocity,
is time,
is the porosity,
is the fluid density,
is the pressure,
is the effective viscosity,
is the total body force, including the porous-medium resistance and other external forces expressed as follows:
where
is the shear viscosity that is not necessarily the same as
,
is the permeability,
is the external force,
is the geometric function that can be expressed as [
31]:
Note that the pressure,
, in Equation (1b) is the fluid pressure in pores instead of the volume-averaged pressure [
15]. The first and second terms on the right side of Equation (2) are the linear and nonlinear drag forces due to the presence of the porous media, respectively. Strictly speaking, the nonlinear term in Equation (2) should be considered for tight matrix and fractures. For the low-speed flow in tight matrix, the value of
is usually negligibly small, and thus the effect of the nonlinear drag force can be neglected for the sake of simplification, while for the high-speed flow in fractures, the nonlinear drag force should be considered owing to the large value of
[
32,
33]. In this work, the nonlinear drag force is considered for tight matrix and fractures.
2.2. Gas Slippage Effect
Owing to the small pore size in tight porous media, the Knudsen number,
, where
represents the mean free path of the gas and
is the characteristic pore size, is usually so large that the gas-slippage effect takes place and the apparent permeability increases. It should be noted that the apparent permeability reflects the real gas-transport capacity in porous media, which is dependent on the characteristics of the porous media and fluid. The initial intrinsic permeability, which only depends on the initial porous structures, is the measured liquid permeability when the pressure is the initial reservoir pressure. The relationship between the apparent permeability and initial intrinsic permeability can be given as follows:
where
is the apparent permeability,
is the initial intrinsic permeability,
is the total correction factor,
is the correction factor due to the stress-sensitivity porous structures,
is the correction factor due to the gas-slippage effect.
Note that the porous media are located deep underground, and thus the pore structures are sensitive to the pore pressure (or effective stress), and the permeability and porosity are functions of the pore pressure (or effective stress).
A detailed description of the stress sensitivity of permeability and porosity will be presented in the next section. Here, the stress-dependent measured liquid permeability,
, can be expressed as follows:
Note that only depends on the stress-dependent porous structures, and is not affected by the fluid properties.
Similarly, the measured gas permeability without the stress sensitivity of permeability and porosity is given as follows:
where
is the Klinkenberg’s corrected permeability without the effect of the stress-dependent porous structures.
To consider the influence of the gas-slippage effect, the correction factor,
, is introduced to correct the permeability. Currently, various expressions for
are proposed to describe the gas-slippage effect. Klinkenberg [
29] proposed a widely used expression as follows:
where
is the Klinkenberg’s slippage factor that usually depends on the porous structures. Nevertheless, the Klinkenberg’s correlation is only a first-order correlation, which may not be suitable for the tight porous media with a large Knudsen number.
Tang et al. [
34] proposed a second-order correlation, which can be considered a direct extension of the Klinkenberg’s correlation. The correction factor,
, presented by Tang et al. [
34] is written as:
where
and
are the slippage factors that depend on the mean free path, characteristic pore size, pressure, and so on.
In order to study the gas transport in all flow regimes, i.e., continuum flow (
), slip flow (
), transition flow (
), and free molecular flow (
), some scholars recommended the correction factor,
, as follows [
35]:
where
is the slip coefficient and is equal to
for slip flow,
is the rarefaction coefficient, which is given as [
36]:
Equations (9) and (10) are derived from flows in a single pipe at micro and nano scales and have been widely applied to tight porous media. According to the definition of
, the mean free path,
, and the characteristic pore size,
, should be determined to obtain the value of
. Based on the gas kinetic theory, the mean free path,
, can be given by [
37]:
where
is the dynamic viscosity,
is the gas constant,
is the temperature. Following the suggestion of Ziarani and Aguilera [
38], the characteristic pore size,
, can be evaluated by [
39]:
where
is the stress-dependent porosity, and the units of
and
are micron (
) and millidarcy (
), respectively.
2.3. Stress Sensitivity of Permeability and Porosity
The porous media located deep underground usually suffer from overburden pressure due to the presence of overlying rocks. In the development of oil and gas reservoirs, the pore pressure decreases as the fluid in the porous media is exploited. Therefore, the effective stress, which is approximately equal to the overburden pressure minus the pore pressure, will increase. The increase of the effective stress will result in the deformation of the reservoir rocks and then reduce the permeability and porosity. This phenomenon is called stress sensitivity of permeability and porosity. Many studies [
28,
30] have pointed out that these stress-sensitivity characteristics in low permeable reservoirs are especially obvious, and thus the effect of the stress sensitivity on the permeability and porosity should be considered in the simulation of gas flow in tight porous media.
The relationship between the permeability and the pore pressure is usually described by [
40]:
where
is the initial reservoir pressure,
is the permeability modulus.
The permeability varies with the porosity, which follows the following expression [
40]:
where
is the porosity sensitivity exponent,
is the porosity under the initial reservoir pressure.
The pore structures in real porous media are so complex that it is difficult to obtain a generalized porosity-permeability relationship. Ergun [
31] proposed an expression to describe the relationship between the permeability,
, and porosity,
:
where
is the solid-particle diameter. Equation (15) can be used to simulate gas flows in porous media with an approximately uniform solid-particle diameter. Note that owing to the stress sensitivity of the reservoir rocks, the solid-particle diameter,
, is not a constant, but a function of the pore pressure,
. However, it is difficult to determine the relationship between
and
, and there is little work to study this. In this work, we only use Equation (15) to approximatively describe the relationship between the permeability,
, and porosity,
, under the initial reservoir pressure,
, and the relationship between the permeability,
, and porosity,
ϕd, at arbitrary reservoir pressure,
, is defined by Equation (14). The solid-particle diameter under the initial reservoir pressure is set to be
. Therefore, in simulations, stress sensitivity could only affect the permeability and porosity, but not affect the solid-particle diameter and the structures of the porous media.