Non-isothermal, compressible gas flow for the simulation of an enhanced gas recovery application

In this work, we present a framework for numerical modeling of CO2 injection into porous media for enhanced gas recovery (EGR) from depleted reservoirs. Physically, we have to deal with non-isothermal, compressible gas flows resulting in a system of coupled non-linear PDEs. We describe the mathematical framework for the underlying balance equations as well as the equations of state for mixing gases. We use an object-oriented finite element method implemented in C++. The numerical model has been tested against an analytical solution for a simplified problem and then applied to CO2 injection into a real reservoir. Numerical modeling allows to investigate physical phenomena and to predict reservoir pressures as well as temperatures depending on injection scenarios and is therefore a useful tool for applied numerical analysis. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.