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Di Donato & Blunt 2004
Di Donato, G. and Blunt, M.J. (2004). Streamline-based dual-porosity simulation of reactive transport and flow in fractured reservoirs. Water Resources Research 40: doi: 10.1029/2003WR002772. issn: 0043-1397.

We present a streamline-based formulation to model two processes: transport of a tracer undergoing rate-limited sorption and two-phase (water/oil or air/water) transport in fractured systems, using a dual-porosity approach. We show that these two processes can be simulated using mathematically equivalent formulations. In both cases the system conceptually has two components: a flowing fraction connected to stagnant regions with transfer between the two domains. Streamlines capture movement through the flowing fraction. Fluid transfer between flowing and stagnant regions enters as a source/sink term in the one-dimensional transport equations along a streamline. To model flow and transport in fractured systems, we develop a new formulation for the transfer function that matches experimental imbibition data. Then we illustrate the streamline approach with synthetic reservoir problems. We use a finely gridded (over one million grid blocks) three-dimensional domain with a highly heterogeneous permeability field to study both fracture flow and tracer transport. We find breakthrough curves that are consistent with anomalous transport described by an exponent that characterizes the longtime tail of the transit time distribution. For fracture flow we demonstrate that the speed of fluid advance in the fractures is controlled by the imbibition rate. The run times for the simulations scale approximately linearly with system size, making the method appropriate for the simulation of large numerical models.

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Abstract

Keywords
Physical Properties of Rocks, Fracture and flow, Hydrology, Groundwater transport, Physical Properties of Rocks, Transport properties, anomalous transport, dual porosity, fractured reservoirs, reactive tracer transport, streamline
Journal
Water Resources Research
http://www.agu.org/wrr/
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
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