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Bruno Ramon Batista Fernandes University of Texas

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Bruno Ramon Batista Fernandes University of Texas

Bruno Ramon Batista Fernandes is a Research Associate at The University of Texas at Austin. Have Experience in Engineering, acting in the following topics: Reservoir Engineering, Simulation & Modelling and Development of Computational Solutions.

Bruno Ramon Batista Fernandes - Research Associate - Center for Subsurface Energy & the Environment | LinkedIn

Hydrogen storage assessment in depleted oil reservoir and saline aquifer

Hydrogen (H2) is an attractive energy carrier to move, store, and deliver energy in a form that can be easily used. Field proven technology for underground hydrogen storage (UHS) is essential for a successful hydrogen economy. Options for this are manmade caverns, salt domes/caverns, saline aquifers, and depleted oil/gas fields, where large quantities of gaseous hydrogen have been stored in caverns for many years.

The key requirements intrinsic of a porous rock formation for seasonal storage of hydrogen are: adequate capacity, ability to contain H2, capability to inject/extract high volumes of H2, and a reliable caprock to prevent leakage. We have carefully evaluated a commercial non-isothermal compositional gas reservoir simulator and its suitability for hydrogen storage and withdrawal from saline aquifers and depleted oil/gas reservoirs. We have successfully calibrated the gas equation of state model against published laboratory H2 density and viscosity data as a function of pressure and temperature.

Comparisons between the H2, natural gas and CO2 storage in real field models were also performed. Our numerical models demonstrated more lateral spread of the H2 when compared to CO2 and natural gas with a need for special containment in H2 projects. It was also observed that the experience with CO2 and natural gas storage cannot be simply replicated with H2.

Development of adaptive implicit chemical and compositional reservoir simulators

Authors :  Bruno Ramon Batista Fernandes
Reservoir simulators are important tools used in the oil industry for evaluating field opportunity, reservoir management, and reserve estimation. Such tools are based on complex physics and mathematics that require fast solution in order to provide better production scenarios and history matching. In this work, algorithms for solving the partial differential equations arising in modeling compositional miscible gas flooding and chemical EOR processes are presented.
Herein, the algorithms presented are based on time discretization schemes known as IMPEC (Implicit Pressure explicit compositions), fully implicit and a combination of these two approaches known as adaptive implicit (AIM). The main goal of this work is to improve the performance of the simulations. For compositional miscible gas flooding, the following approaches are implemented: Natural variables, extensive global variables, and a novel intensive global variable fully implicit approach, an AIM from the literature, and a new AIM.
The implementation considers Cartesian grids and fractured reservoirs using the embedded discrete fracture method. Additionally, all implementation considers up to four phases, which is novel for the adaptive implicit methods. For the chemical EOR the following formulations are developed: FI approaches (global variable, natural variable, and mixed variable) and a global variable adaptive implicit. All important features for polymer and surfactant flooding are considered.

3D compositional reservoir simulation in conjunction with unstructured grids

Authors : André Luiz de Souza Araújo, Bruno Ramon Batista Fernandes, Edilson Pimentel Drumond Filho, Robson Melo Araújo, Ivens da Costa Menezes Lima, Alysson Daniel Ribeiro Gonçalves, Francisco Marcondes, Kamy Sepehrnoori

In the last decade, unstructured grids have been a very important step in the development of petroleum reservoir simulators. In fact, the so-called third generation simulators are based on Perpendicular Bisection (PEBI) unstructured grids. Nevertheless, the use of PEBI grids is not very general when full anisotropic reservoirs are modeled. Another possibility is the use of the Element based Finite Volume Method (EbFVM). This approach has been tested for several reservoir types and in principle has no limitation in application.

In this paper, we implement this approach in an in-house simulator called UTCOMP using four element types: hexahedron, tetrahedron, prism, and pyramid. UTCOMP is a compositional, multiphase/multi-component simulator based on an Implicit Pressure Explicit Composition (IMPEC) approach designed to handle several hydrocarbon recovery processes.

All properties, except permeability and porosity, are evaluated in each grid vertex. In this work, four case studies were selected to evaluate the implementation, two of them involving irregular geometries. Results are shown in terms of oil and gas rates and saturated gas field.