Subcontinuum mass transport of condensed hydrocarbons in nanoporous media
Citations Over TimeTop 1% of 2015 papers
Abstract
Although hydrocarbon production from unconventional reservoirs, the so-called shale gas, has exploded recently, reliable predictions of resource availability and extraction are missing because conventional tools fail to account for their ultra-low permeability and complexity. Here, we use molecular simulation and statistical mechanics to show that continuum description--Darcy's law--fails to predict transport in shales nanoporous matrix (kerogen). The non-Darcy behaviour arises from strong adsorption in kerogen and the breakdown of hydrodynamics at the nanoscale, which contradict the assumption of viscous flow. Despite this complexity, all permeances collapse on a master curve with an unexpected dependence on alkane length. We rationalize this non-hydrodynamic behaviour using a molecular description capturing the scaling of permeance with alkane length and density. These results, which stress the need for a change of paradigm from classical descriptions to nanofluidic transport, have implications for shale gas but more generally for transport in nanoporous media.
Related Papers
- → Kinetic study of marine and lacustrine shale grains using Rock-Eval pyrolysis: Implications to hydrocarbon generation, retention and expulsion(2017)42 cited
- → Studies on the co-pyrolysis characteristics of oil shale and spent oil shale(2015)16 cited
- → Characterization of kerogen in shale core plugs using T*-based magnetic resonance methods(2022)14 cited
- → Modeling the Kerogen 3D Molecular Structure(2015)10 cited
- Comparison of thermal analysis between Devonian shale and Green River oil shale(1978)