Pore-Scale Simulations of Single- and Two-Phase Flow in Porous Media: Approaches and Applications

We present a review of pore-scale simulations of immiscible fluid transport with focus on two of the most popular approaches: lattice Boltzmann modeling for direct simulations on digital models of the pore space and simulations on network models extracted from the pore space. This review focuses on covering basic theory and implementation strategies and gives the readers input and motivation to start their own pore-scale simulations and relate them to realistic porous media. We present a review of recent and relevant applications and how a digital workflow that combines advanced pore-scale imaging and simulations can give very useful input to different fields of science and industry, including reservoir characterization. Given the large span in methods and applications, this review does not aim to cover all methods or applications. However, it covers popular methods and describes to some extent their applicability to different types of transport problems.