Gas Transport in Shale Nanopores with Miscible Zone

Abstract

Based on the results of molecular dynamics simulation, in a gas-water miscible zone, the velocity profiles of the flowing water film do not increase monotonously but increase first and then decrease, which is due to the interaction between water and gas molecules. This exhibits a new physical mechanism. In this paper, we firstly propose a gas-water flow model that takes into account the new physical phenomena and describes the distribution of gas-water velocity in the whole pore more accurately. In this model, a decreasing factor for water film in the gas-water miscible zone is used to describe the decrease of water velocity in the gas-water miscible zone, which leads to the gas velocity decrease correspondingly. The new flow model considers the interaction among gas and water molecules in the miscible zone and can provide more accurate velocity profiles compared with the flow models not considering the miscible region. Comparison calculation shows that the previous model overestimates the flow velocity, and the overestimation increases with the decrease of the pore radius. Based on the new gas-water flow model, a new permeability correction factor is deduced to consider the interaction among gas and water molecules.