Analysis of Thermal Stimulation to Enhance Shale Gas Recovery through a Novel Conceptual Model

Abstract EN

To investigate the effect of thermal stimulation on shale gas recovery, a novel conceptual model coupling shale gas flow and temperature is proposed.

The adsorption process is nonisothermal, and adsorption capacity changes with temperature.

The local thermal nonequilibrium can explicitly describe the convective heat exchange between rock and fluids.

The fluid flow model takes Knudsen diffusion, slippage effect, and non-Darcy flow into account.

The complex geometry of fracture network due to hydraulic fracturing can also be considered.

A series of synthetic tests are designed to demonstrate the model performance.

The results show that the dynamic characteristics of heat diffusion and pressure spread can be reasonably obtained.

Gas recovery decreases with the increase of volumetric heat transfer coefficient, and there exists a threshold value of the effect of volumetric heat transfer coefficient on gas recovery.

Gas recovery increases with the gas and rock thermal conductivity and decreases with heat capacity of rock, but the decrease level becomes insignificant when heat capacity of rock is sufficiently high.

Increasing the heating temperature and decreasing the production pressure are beneficial to enhance shale gas recovery, but the rate of recovery enhancement tends to decrease for sufficiently high heating temperature.