Simulation of gas flow in micro-porous media with the regularized lattice Boltzmann method

One primary challenge for prediction of gas flow in the unconventional gas reservoir at the pore-scale such as shale and tight gas reservoirs is the geometric complexity of the micro-porous media. In this paper, a regularized multiple-relaxation-time (MRT) lattice Boltzmann (LB) model is applied to analyze gas flow in 2-dimensional micro-porous medium reconstructed by quartet structure generation set (QSGS) on pore-scale. The velocity distribution inside the porous structure is presented and analyzed, and the effects of the porosity and specific surface area on the rarefied gas flow and apparent permeability are examined and investigated. The simulation results indicate that the gas exhibits different flow behaviours at various pressure conditions and the gas permeability is strongly related to the pressure. The increased porosity or the decreased specific surface area leads to the increase of the gas apparent permeability, and the gas flow is more sensitive to the pore morphological properties at low-pressure conditions. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.