Sustainable Production from Shale Gas Resources through Heat-Assisted Depletion
Open Access
- 9 March 2020
- journal article
- research article
- Published by MDPI AG in Sustainability
- Vol. 12 (5), 2145
- https://doi.org/10.3390/su12052145
Abstract
Advancements in drilling and production technologies have made exploiting resources, which for long time were labeled unproducible such as shales, as economically feasible. In particular, lateral drilling coupled with hydraulic fracturing has created means for hydrocarbons to be transported from the shale matrix through the stimulated network of microcracks, natural fractures, and hydraulic fractures to the wellbore. Because of the degree of confinement, the ultimate recovery is just a small fraction of the total hydrocarbons in place. Our aim was to investigate how augmented pressure gradient through hydraulic fracturing when coupled with another derive mechanism such as heating can improve the overall recovery for more sustainable exploitation of unconventional resources. Knowledge on how hydrocarbons are stored and transported within the shale matrix is uncertain. Shale matrix, which consists of organic and inorganic constituents, have pore sizes of few nanometers, a degree of confinement at which our typical reservoir engineering models break down. These intricacies hinder any thorough investigations of hydrocarbon production from shale matrix under the influence of pressure and thermal gradients. Kerogen, which represents the solid part of the organic materials in shales, serves as form of nanoporous media, where hydrocarbons are stored and then expelled after shale stimulation procedure. In this work, a computational representation of a kerogen–hydrocarbon system was replicated to study the depletion process under coupled mechanisms of pressure and temperature. The extent of production enhancement because of increasing temperature was shown. Moreover, heating requirements to achieve the enhancement at reservoir scale was also presented to assess the sustainability of the proposed method.Keywords
This publication has 38 references indexed in Scilit:
- Pore Network Modeling Study of Gas Transport Temperature Dependency in Tight FormationsACS Omega, 2019
- Matrix–Fracture Interactions During Flow in Organic Nanoporous Materials Under LoadingTransport in Porous Media, 2017
- Sorption of Phenanthrene onto Diatomite under the Influences of Solution Chemistry: A Study of Linear Sorption based on Maximal Information CoefficientJournal of Environmental Informatics, 2016
- Langmuir slip-Langmuir sorption permeability model of shaleFuel, 2016
- Interpretation of net and excess adsorption isotherms in microporous adsorbentsMicroporous and Mesoporous Materials, 2014
- Gas Permeability of ShaleSPE Reservoir Evaluation & Engineering, 2012
- Shale Gas-in-Place Calculations Part I: New Pore-Scale ConsiderationsSPE Journal, 2011
- Fundamentals of High Pressure AdsorptionLangmuir, 2009
- Nanopores and Apparent Permeability of Gas Flow in Mudrocks (Shales and Siltstone)Journal of Canadian Petroleum Technology, 2009
- Adsorption at high pressuresChemical Reviews, 1968