Software

Reservoir Simulators and Modeling Tools

FracCSM

FracCSM is a hydraulic fracturing simulator developed at CSM with funding from CNPC-USA and Foundation Energi Simulation (formerly Foundation CMG). It simulates slurry injection into a wellbore followed by hydraulic fracture initiation when the wellbore pressure reaches a critical value. These fractures widen and extend as injection continues, with fluid leak-off through the fracture faces. Flow in the wellbore is assumed to be piston-like, with slurry segments traversing the wellbore and entering the fracture. In addition, heat is exchanged between the wellbore and fracture and their surroundings. Fracture extension is described by a correlation based on the fracture tip stress intensity factor, and fracture widening is based on the deformation of elastic media under an applied load. Multiple completed zones along the wellbore can give rise to multiple fractures, and their interaction with each other is described by the Stress Shadow effect, which alters the stress field in the vicinity of the fractures. The fracture is discretized into a regular rectangular grid that consists of fractured and inactive grid blocks. Each fractured grid block is oriented perpendicular to the minimum stress direction, determined by the initial stress field and the Stress Shadow effect, and this can result in a fracture that is non-planar. The simulator also has the capability to operate in real time, with external input of rate-dependent data as it is measured in the field.

TOUGH2-CSM

TOUGH2-CSM is a reservoir simulator, developed at the Colorado School of Mines (CSM) for use in Carbon Sequestration Modeling (CSM) and funded by DOE and Foundation Energi Simulation (formerly Foundation CMG). It simulates non-isothermal multiphase flow and transport of CO2 in heterogeneous porous and fractured brine aquifers taking into consideration the coupled effects of multiphase fluid and heat flow, pressure and thermally induced rock deformation, CO2 dissolution, and geochemical reactions. TOUGH2-CSM is fully implicit, three-dimensional, utilizes an unstructured grid, and is parallelized.

TOUGH2-EGS

TOUGH2-EGS is a reservoir simulator, developed at the Colorado School of Mines for modeling Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) and funded by DOE and Foundation Energi Simulation (formerly Foundation CMG). It simulates non-isothermal multiphase water/air and heat flow in heterogeneous porous and fractured geothermal reservoirs, coupled with pressure and thermally induced rock deformation, and geochemical reactions. TOUGH2-EGS is fully implicit, three-dimensional, utilizes an unstructured grid, parallelized, and is able to quantify and model physical and chemical processes and long-term performance of EGS reservoirs and evaluate optimum design and production strategies of EGS systems.

SUNGAS

SUNGAS is a Simulator of Unconventional Natural GAS reservoirs, developed at CSM with funding from CNPC-USA and Foundation Energi Simulation (formerly Foundation CMG). It simulates isothermal flows of gas and water in one, two, and three-dimensional porous and fractured media. The primary application for SUNGAS is in the simulation of gas production from hydraulic fractured wells in conventional and unconventional tight and shale gas reservoirs. The current version offers enhanced process modeling capabilities, including Klinkenberg effect, non-Darcy flow, gas adsorption, and geomechanics effect. In addition, it presents a hybrid-fracture model for modeling gas flow in tight and shale gas reservoirs, produced through horizontal wells with multi-stage hydraulic fractures. In this method, a multi-domain, multi-continuum concept is built for handling multi-scaled heterogeneity and fractures, i.e., using hybrid modeling approaches to describe different types and scales of fractures from explicit modeling of hydraulic fractures and fracture network in simulated reservoir volume (SRV) to distributed natural fractures, micro-fractures, and tight matrix.

THM-EGS

THM-EGS is a Thermal-Hydrological-Mechanical (THM) reservoir simulator for Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS) reservoirs, developed at CSM with funding from the Foundation Energi Simulation (formerly Foundation CMG). The simulator is based on a next-generation reservoir simulation platform, developed at Colorado School of Mines. It is an object-oriented parallel software, programmed in FORTRAN03. It simulates non-isothermal multiphase fluid and heat flow in heterogeneous porous and fractured reservoirs, taking into consideration the coupled effect of multiphase fluid and heat flow, and pressure and thermally induced rock deformation. THM-CSM is fully implicit, three-dimensional, utilizes an unstructured grid, and is parallelized. The parallel scheme of THM-EGS is written with the hybrid MPI/OpenMP language, which enables the simulation to conduct large scale reservoir simulation with millions of grid blocks.

THM-CO2

THM-CO2 is a Thermal-Hydrological-Mechanical (THM) reservoir simulator for CO2 geosequestration, developed at the Colorado School of Mines (CSM) with funding from the Foundation Energi Simulation (formerly Foundation CMG). It simulates non-isothermal multiphase flow and transport in heterogeneous porous and fractured reservoirs, taking into consideration coupled processes of multiphase fluid and heat flow, pressure and thermally induced rock deformation, and fluid component interactions in CO2 injection and storage in reservoirs. THM-CO2 is fully implicit, three-dimensional, utilizes an unstructured grid, and is parallelized.