An Advanced Discrete Fracture Methodology for Fast, Robust, and Accurate Simulation of Energy Production From Complex Fracture Networks

Abstract

Fracture networks are abundant in subsurface applications (e.g., geothermal energy production, CO2 sequestration). Fractured reservoirs often have a very complex structure, making modeling flow and transport in such networks slow and unstable. Consequently, this limits our ability to perform uncertainty quantification and increases development costs and environmental risks. This study provides an advanced methodology for simulation based on Discrete Fracture Model approach. The preprocessing framework results in a fully conformal, uniformly distributed grid for realistic 2D fracture networks at a required level of precision. The simplified geometry and topology of the resulting network are compared with input (i.e., unchanged) data to evaluate the preprocessing influence. The resulting mesh‐related parameters, such as volume distributions and orthogonality of control volume connections, are analyzed. Furthermore, changes in fluid‐flow response related to preprocessing are evaluated using a high‐enthalpy two‐phase flow geothermal simulator. The simplified topology directly improves meshing results and, consequently, the accuracy and efficiency of numerical simulation. The main novelty of this work is the introduction of an automatic preprocessing framework allowing us to simplify the fracture network down to required level of complexity and addition of a fracture aperture correction capable of handling heterogeneous aperture distributions, low connectivity fracture networks, and sealing fractures. The graph‐based framework is fully open‐source and explicitly resolves small‐angle intersections within the fracture network. A rigorous analysis of changes in the static and dynamic impact of the preprocessing algorithm demonstrates that explicit fracture representation can be computationally efficient, enabling their use in large‐scale uncertainty quantification studies.

Consistent treatment of shear failure in embedded discrete fracture models using XFVM

“…Merging of intersections can be interpreted as one additional step to automatically adapt the topology of patterns from outcrops for EDFM. This is comparable to De Hoop et al., 72 where they automatically simplify fracture patterns for flow calculation using EDFM by merging nodes in a chosen radius.…”

A benchmark study on reactive two-phase flow in porous media: Part II - results and discussion

“…The recent implementation of GPU and multithread CPU versions of DARTS makes it a highly efficient simulation platform for energy transition applications [38,37]. Several extensions include physics-based proxy modeling for compositional problems [17], Adaptive Grid Refinement for geothermal and reactive problems [29] and general-purpose Discrete Fracture Modeling framework [28]. In addition, DARTS has been recently extended for modeling of induced seismicity [46,47].…”

A Review of Simulation Models of Heat Extraction for a Geothermal Reservoir in an Enhanced Geothermal System

“…The single-porosity model assumes the geothermal reservoir as a homogeneous porous medium, thus, the detailed On the basis of the above experimental projects, the high cost of experiments limits their implementation in many countries, but the numerical simulation has the advantage of investigation in different conditions with a low cost [19]. A completely numerical model includes three parts: the power generation system, the numerical model of injection and production wells, and a geothermal reservoir [20][21][22]. The heat transfer in the geothermal reservoir determines the performance of the entire system; meanwhile, the fracture distribution and the mathematical description can directly impact the results of numerical simulation in geothermal reservoirs [23][24][25].…”