Pore-Scale Study of Gas Flows in Ultra-tight Porous Media

为了提高页岩等非常规天然气资源中烃类气体的最终采收率，我们需要揭示超致密多孔介质中非直观的天然气运移机制。利用我们以前和最近在微米/纳米尺度的稀薄气体流动建模和储集层岩石的孔隙尺度特征方面的开创性工作，我们提出了一个雄心勃勃的项目，通过开发直接的数值模拟模型和技术来处理相关多孔材料的二值化图像，以应对这一新出现的研究挑战。这项工作将把目前采用的启发式方法，即达西定律和孔隙网络模型，转变为以第一原理为基础的方法，并能够量化与前一种方法相关的天然气运移预测不确定性。现在来自EPSRC的及时支持将为我们提供重要的资源来塑造这一新兴的研究领域-了解和量化超紧密多孔介质中的气体流动物理。

To enhance ultimate recovery of hydrocarbon gases from unconventional gas resources such as shales, we need to uncover the non-intuitive gas transport mechanisms in ultra-tight porous media. Exploiting our previous and recent pioneering work in modelling rarefied gas flows at micro/nano-scales and in pore-scale characterisation of reservoir rocks, we present an ambitious project to tackle this newly-emerged research challenge through developing direct numerical simulation models and techniques that work on binarised images of concerned porous materials. This work will transform the currently-adopted heuristic approaches, i.e. Darcy-like laws and pore network modelling, into those underpinned by the first principle, and enable the quantification of prediction uncertainty on gas transport associated with the former approaches. Timely support now from EPSRC will provide us crucial resources to shape this emerging research area - understanding and quantifying gas flow physics in ultra-tight porous media.