Pore-Scale Modeling of CO₂ Injection Using Density Functional Hydrodynamics

The pore-scale numerical modeling of CO₂ injection into natural rock saturated with oil–water mixture was performed using the density functional hydrodynamics approach. The detailed 3D digital model of the sandstone core sample contained over 7 billion cells, which allowed us to perform analysis of oil displacement efficiency at different scales. Utilization of large-size detailed numerical models make it possible to characterize, both qualitatively and quantitatively, the processes at pore scale to the level of detail not achievable on smaller models. The obtained results indicate large-scale effects even on relatively heterogeneous core indicating possible need for multiscale hierarchical models even in heterogeneous cases. This fact imposes the demand for scalability performance on both the software and hardware used in such simulations, as well as the need for adequate modeling upscaling methods.