Compositional modeling in porous media using constant volume flash and flux computation without the need for phase identification

The paper deals with the numerical solution of a compositional model describing compressible two-phase flow of a mixture composed of several components in porous media with species transfer between the phases. The mathematical model is formulated by means of the extended Darcy's laws for all phases, components continuity equations, constitutive relations, and appropriate initial and boundary conditions. The splitting of components among the phases is described using a new formulation of the local thermodynamic equilibrium which uses volume, temperature, and moles as specification variables. The problem is solved numerically using a combination of the mixed-hybrid finite element method for the total flux discretization and the finite volume method for the discretization of transport equations. A new approach to numerical flux approximation is proposed, which does not require the phase identification and determination of correspondence between the phases on adjacent elements. The time discretization is carried out by the backward Euler method. The resulting large system of nonlinear algebraic equations is solved by the Newton-Raphson iterative method. We provide eight examples of different complexity to show reliability and robustness of our approach. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.