Effect of Poroelastic Coupling and Fracture Dynamics on Solute Transport and Geomechanical Stability

The coupling between solute transport and rock's geomechanical processes, for example, flow‐induced fracture activation, has emerged as an important hydrogeological challenge due to its role in applications such as underground waste disposal, carbon sequestration, contaminant remediation, enhan...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Water resources research 2021-10, Vol.57 (10), p.n/a
Main Authors: Tran, Minh, Jha, Birendra
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
breakthrough time
Carbon sequestration
Computer applications
Contaminants
Coupling
Dynamic stability
Enhanced oil recovery
Flow stability
Fluid dynamics
Fluid flow
fluid mixing
Fracture mechanics
fracture modeling
Fracture permeability
Geology
Geomechanics
Hydrogeology
Mechanical analysis
Mechanics
Miscibility
Modelling
Oil pollution
Oil recovery
Permeability
Perturbation
Porous media
Sensitivity analysis
Solute transport
Solutes
Tracers
Transport processes
Transport properties
Underground waste disposal
Viscosity
viscous fingering
Waste disposal
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Summary:The coupling between solute transport and rock's geomechanical processes, for example, flow‐induced fracture activation, has emerged as an important hydrogeological challenge due to its role in applications such as underground waste disposal, carbon sequestration, contaminant remediation, enhanced oil recovery, and tracer‐based reservoir surveillance. Despite recent advances in modeling flow and geomechanics coupling, a holistic approach to capturing the synergy between fluid flow, solute transport, induced stresses, and fracture mechanics is lacking. This study investigates the rich interplay between these processes within a novel computational framework that is proposed to solve the coupled flow, transport, geomechanics, and fracture mechanics problem. The Embedded Discrete Fracture Modeling (EDFM) method is used to model the flow and transport processes in fractured porous media while an improved Bandis model is employed to capture the fracture mechanical response to flow‐induced stress perturbations. The role of transport‐geomechanics coupling in modulating the spreading and miscibility of a solute slug during viscously unstable flows is examined. We investigate how flow‐transport coupling, parameterized through the solute viscosity contrast and the fracture permeability, influences the stress state and fracture stability in the domain. A case study, inspired by a huff‐n‐puff tracer flowback study, is conducted to investigate the applicability of the proposed framework in the field. A sensitivity analysis is performed to evaluate the dependence of global transport characteristics, permeability evolution, and fracture stability on parameters dictating the strength of coupling between geomechanics, flow, and transport. Key Points Quantitative characterization of the geomechanical coupling effect on transport metrics: solute breakthrough time and degree of mixing Mechanistic understanding of permeability evolution and fracture stability during hydrodynamically unstable transport Effect of the injected‐to‐resident fluid viscosity ratio on the stress state and fracture stability
ISSN:0043-1397
1944-7973
DOI:10.1029/2021WR029584