Numerical Modeling and Spatial Moment Analysis of Thermal Fronts in a Coupled Fracture-Skin-Matrix System |
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| Authors: | Email author" target="_blank">N?NatarajanEmail author G?Suresh Kumar |
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| Institution: | (1) EWRE Division, Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, Chennai, 600036, India;(2) Department of Ocean Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, Chennai, 600036, India |
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| Abstract: | In this study, the behavior of thermal fronts along the fracture is studied in the presence of fracture-skin in a coupled
fracture-matrix system. Cold water is injected into the fracture, which advances gradually towards production well, while
extracting heat from the surrounding reservoir matrix. The heat conduction into the fracture-skin and the rock-matrix from
the high permeability fracture is assumed to be one dimensional perpendicular to the axis of fluid flow along the fracture.
Constant temperature cold water is injected through an injection well at the fracture inlet. The fluid flow takes place along
the horizontal fracture which ensures connectivity between the injection and production wells. Since the rock-matrix is assumed
to be tight, the permeability of fracture-skin as well as the rock-matrix is neglected. The present study focuses on the heat
flux transfer at the fracture-skin interface as against the earlier studies on fracture-matrix interface, and the sensitivity
of additional heterogeneity in the form of fracture skin in a conventional fracture-matrix coupled system is studied. The
behavior of thermal fronts for various thermal conductivity values of the fracture-skin and rock-matrix is analyzed. Spatial
moment analysis is performed on the thermal distribution profiles resulting from numerical studies in order to investigate
the impact on mobility and dispersion behavior of the fluid in the presence of fracture-skin. The presence of fracture skin
affects the heat transfer significantly in the coupled fracture-matrix system. The lower order spatial moments indicate that
the effective thermal velocity increases with increase in skin thermal conductivity and a significant thermal dispersion is
observed at the inlet of the fracture owing to the high thermal conductivity of the fracture-skin at the early stages. Furthermore
the higher spatial moments indicate that the asymmetricity increases with decrease in skin thermal conductivity unlike the
case with half fracture aperture and fluid velocity and the kurtosis is maximum with higher skin thermal conductivity which
implies enhanced heat extraction from the fracture-skin into the fracture. Results suggest that the amount of heat extraction
by the circulating fluid within the fracture from the reservoir not only depends on the rock-matrix module of the reservoir
characteristics but also the fracture-skin characteristics of the system and subsequently influence the reservoir efficiency. |
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