An Analytical Model for Shale Gas Permeability
About the Course
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AAPG E-Symposium Series. laboratory studies have revealed previously unknown behaviors in shale gas which unlock secrets of permeability and sweet spots in shale gas reservoirs. The presentation presents the findings and also goes into detail about how the new information can be applied in order to potentially improve recovery in reservoirs. Based on the kinetic theory of gases and using the regularized 13-moment method, analytical R13 AP model is introduced for predicting gas apparent permeability of nanoporous shale samples. These samples are characterized by ultratight pores and may introduce significant rarefaction effects, especially under the laboratory conditions, which cannot be accounted for in the classical hydrodynamic equations. Due to the significance of the rarefaction effects, measured values of the gas apparent permeability depend on the operating parameters, such as pressure and temperature, and gas type in addition to pore size. The R13 AP model incorporates these parameters and can predict the apparent permeability for Knudsen numbers up to unity.
Your Instructor
Dr. Ali Takbiri-Borujeni is an assistant professor at West Virginia University. He completed his undergraduate studies at Petroleum University of Technology (PUT) in Ahwaz, Iran. Subsequently, he continued his studies for M.S. at Institute Français du Petrole (IFP) with a degree in Reservoir Geosciences and Engineering and M.S. degree from PUT in reservoir engineering. In 2009, he moved to US to start his PhD studies at Louisiana State University (LSU).
Dr. Ali Takbiri-Borujeni has been heavily involved in innovative research developing new-generation of flow simulators for unconventional reservoirs, Enhanced Oil Recovery, and the area of computational fluid dynamics. His recent research focus is on the modeling of shale gas transport phenomena.