Numerical simulation of single-phase two-components flow in naturally fractured oil reservoirs

The main goal of this work is to develop a numerical simulator to study an isothermal single-phase two-component flow in a naturally fractured oil reservoir, taking into account advection and diffusion effects. We use the Peng-Robinson equation of state with a volume translation to evaluate the properties of the components, and the discretization of the governing partial differential equations is carried out using the Finite Difference Method, along with implicit and first-order upwind schemes. This process leads to a coupled non-linear algebraic system for the unknowns pressure and molar fractions. After a linearization and the use of an operator splitting, the Conjugate Gradient and Bi-conjugated Gradient Stabilized methods are then used to solve two algebraic subsystems, one for the pressure and another for the molar fraction. We studied the effects of fractures in both the flow field and mass transport, as well as in computing time, and the results show that the fractures affect, as expected, the flow creating a thin preferential path for the mass transport.