Subcontinuum mass transport of condensed hydrocarbons in nanoporous media

Kerstin Falk, Benoit Coasne (), Roland Pellenq, Franz-Josef Ulm and Lydéric Bocquet ()
Additional contact information
Kerstin Falk: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Benoit Coasne: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Roland Pellenq: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Franz-Josef Ulm: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Lydéric Bocquet: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Nature Communications, 2015, vol. 6, issue 1, 1-7

Abstract: Abstract Although hydrocarbon production from unconventional reservoirs, the so-called shale gas, has exploded recently, reliable predictions of resource availability and extraction are missing because conventional tools fail to account for their ultra-low permeability and complexity. Here, we use molecular simulation and statistical mechanics to show that continuum description—Darcy’s law—fails to predict transport in shales nanoporous matrix (kerogen). The non-Darcy behaviour arises from strong adsorption in kerogen and the breakdown of hydrodynamics at the nanoscale, which contradict the assumption of viscous flow. Despite this complexity, all permeances collapse on a master curve with an unexpected dependence on alkane length. We rationalize this non-hydrodynamic behaviour using a molecular description capturing the scaling of permeance with alkane length and density. These results, which stress the need for a change of paradigm from classical descriptions to nanofluidic transport, have implications for shale gas but more generally for transport in nanoporous media.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms7949 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:6:y:2015:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms7949

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms7949

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().