A Review of Gas Flow and Its Mathematical Models in Shale Gas Reservoirs

Abstract

The application of horizontal wells with multistage hydraulic fracturing technologies has made the development of shale gas reservoirs become a worldwide economical hotspot in recent years. The gas transport mechanisms in shale gas reservoirs are complicated, due to the multiple types of pores with complex pore structure and special process of gas accumulation and transport. Although there have been many attempts to come up with a suitable and practical mathematical model to characterize the shale gas flow process, no unified model has yet been accepted by academia. In this paper, a comprehensive literature review on the mathematical models developed in recent years for describing gas flow in shale gas reservoirs is summarized. Five models incorporating different transport mechanisms are reviewed, including gas viscous flow in natural fractures or macropores, gas ad-desorption on shale organic, gas slippage, diffusion (Knudsen diffusion, Fick diffusion, and surface diffusion), stress dependence, real gas effect, and adsorption layer effect in the nanoshale matrix system, which is quite different from conventional gas reservoir. This review is very helpful to understand the complex gas flow behaviors in shale gas reservoirs and guide the efficient development of shale gas. In addition to the model description, we depicted the type curves of fractured horizontal well with different seepage models. From the review, it can be found that there is some misunderstanding about the essence of Knudsen/Fick diffusion and slippage, which makes different scholars adopt different weighting methods to consider them. Besides, the contribution of each mechanism on the transport mechanisms is still controversial, which needs further in-depth study in the future.