f Petrophysics of Unconventional Reservoirs: Fluid Flows Simulation in Porous Media Using the Lattice Boltzmann Method on General Purpose GPU Computing

The accurate and precise estimation of porosity and permeability are critical when addressing studies of unconventional oil and gas reservoirs. The characterization of these properties using computational tools has received great interest in recent years, driven by developments in numerical methods and the increasing computing performance of new general purpose, massively parallel architectures. In this work, a fluid flow simulator for porous media is developed and implemented on Graphics Processing Units (GPU). The Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM), in conjunction with the high throughput of GPUs, is used to solve the fluid dynamics for a complex medium and to estimate its permeability. Additionally, the rock porosity is determined using image analysis methods of SEM-XRay images. This approach is a feasible alternative and complements standard measurement methods for dealing with low porosity and low permeability rocks.