Reduced Numerical Model for Methane Hydrate Formation under Conditions of Variable Salinity. Time-Stepping Variants and Sensitivity

Abstract

In this paper, we consider a reduced computational model of methane hydrate formation in variable salinity conditions, and give details on the discretization and phase equilibria implementation. We describe three time-stepping variants: Implicit, Semi-implicit, and Sequential, and we compare the accuracy and efficiency of these variants depending on the spatial and temporal discretization parameters. We also study the sensitivity of the model to the simulation parameters and in particular to the reduced phase equilibria model.

Keywords

• methane hydrate
• multiphase multicomponent flow and transport
• reduced computational model
• time-stepping
• phase equilibria