Pore-scale simulation of methane transport in complex nanopores using a
stabilized lattice Boltzmann method
Abstract
The efficient development of shale gas reservoirs requires an accurate
understanding of methane gas transport in the matrix whose pore size is
mainly in the nanoscale range. As a result, continuum-based approaches
may be inadequate in simulating flow in such systems. Molecular dynamics
(MD) simulations are capable of capturing the relevant microscale
physics with high fidelity, albeit at a substantial computational cost.
This high expense restricts MD simulations to rather small systems and
computational domains, which may not be representative of complex
hierarchical nature of shale reservoirs. To bridge this gap, we use a
particle-based approach, the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM), as a
suitable means to capture the physics of transport at microscale and
simulate large complex domains. In this work, the
multiple-relaxation-time (MRT)-LBM is used to study methane transport in
nano-size pores. The adsorption effect and non-ideal gas behavior are
incorporated using the pseudopotential model and appropriate force
terms. The optimal values of the LB free parameters are determined for a
nano-slit pore using reference velocity and density profiles from MD
simulations. A preconditioning scheme is proposed to improve the
stability of LBM in the presence of force terms. In this scheme,
steady-state profiles obtained in the absence of regularization are used
as the initial condition for simulation runs that include the
regularization step. The results show how roughness adversely affects
gas-transport in nanopores. The stability of the proposed framework
makes it a potential approach for studying methane transport in more
complex nano-porous media and translating transport behavior across
scales.