Multiphysics Simulation of CO2 Geological Storage by Mimetic Finite Differences and Virtual Elements
Please login to view abstract download link
Safe and efficient operation of CO2 geological storage projects requires numerical simulation of a multi-physics problem in which compositional multiphase flow and transport can be tightly coupled with the porous medium deformation. To simulate these processes, one needs to solve a set of coupled, nonlinear, time-dependent partial differential equations governing the mass conservation of each component and linear momentum of the solid-fluid mixture. We focus on the use of polyhedral meshes that prove particularly useful to discretize complex geological structures. We present a scalable fully implicit framework based on a displacement/total velocity/pressure/component density formulation that combines a virtual element approach for mechanics with mimetic finite differences for fluid flow and transport. A Newton-Krylov approach is used to advance the solution in time, preconditioned by a multigrid reduction method. The solver is implemented in GEOS, an open-source, exascale-compatible, research-oriented simulator for modeling fully coupled flow, transport and geomechanics in geological formations. We demonstrate performance and robustness of the proposed framework on a variety of challenging test problems, including realistic field cases.
