Modeling of Kinetic Interface Sensitive Tracers for Two Phase Immiscible Flow in Porous Media with COMSOL Multiphysics® Software

A.-B. Tatomir[1], F. Maier[1], A. Jyoti[1], M. Sauter[1]
[1]Geoscience Centre of the University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
Published in 2014

The understanding of the tracer migration in two-phase porous media systems and its reaction over the fluid-fluid interfaces is a challenging task important for a number of engineering applications, e.g. oil recovery, carbon capture and storage in geological reservoirs, remediation groundwater contaminations, etc. The goal of this work is to implement in COMSOL Multiphysics® an immiscible two-phase flow and tracer transport, accounting for the fluid-fluid interfacial area and a hydrolysis reaction over the interface. The pressure-saturation formulation is chosen among two-phase flow formulations. For closing the system of equations a relationship based on Brooks-Corey approach among capillary pressure, saturation and interfacial area formulation is used. The strongly coupled, parabolic system of partial differential equations is build using the Coefficient Form PDE interface. The hydrolysis of tracer at the fluid-fluid interfaces follows a pseudo-zero order kinetic reaction and it is implemented with the Solute Transport interface.