Laboratory measurement and interpretation of nonlinear gas flow in shale

Yili Kang (), Mingjun Chen (), Xiangchen Li (), Lijun You () and Bin Yang ()
Additional contact information
Yili Kang: State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Exploitation, Institute of Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu 610500, P. R. China
Mingjun Chen: State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Exploitation, Institute of Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu 610500, P. R. China
Xiangchen Li: State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Exploitation, Institute of Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu 610500, P. R. China
Lijun You: State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Exploitation, Institute of Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu 610500, P. R. China
Bin Yang: State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Exploitation, Institute of Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu 610500, P. R. China

International Journal of Modern Physics C (IJMPC), 2015, vol. 26, issue 06, 1-19

Abstract: Gas flow mechanisms in shale are urgent to clarify due to the complicated pore structure and low permeability. Core flow experiments were conducted under reservoir net confining stress with samples from the Longmaxi Shale to investigate the characteristics of nonlinear gas flow. Meanwhile, microstructure analyses and gas adsorption experiments are implemented. Experimental results indicate that non-Darcy flow in shale is remarkable and it has a close relationship with pore pressure. It is found that type of gas has a significant influence on permeability measurement and methane is chosen in this work to study the shale gas flow. Gas slippage effect and minimum threshold pressure gradient weaken with the increasing backpressure. It is demonstrated that gas flow regime would be either slip flow or transition flow with certain pore pressure and permeability. Experimental data computations and microstructure analyses confirm that hydraulic radius of flow tubes in shale are mostly less than 100 nm, indicating that there is no micron scale pore or throat which mainly contributes to flow. The results are significant for the study of gas flow in shale, and are beneficial for laboratory investigation of shale permeability.

Keywords: Shale; permeability; non-Darcy flow; flow regime; scale of flow path (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0129183115500631
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

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:wsi:ijmpcx:v:26:y:2015:i:06:n:s0129183115500631

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

DOI: 10.1142/S0129183115500631

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Modern Physics C (IJMPC) is currently edited by H. J. Herrmann

More articles in International Journal of Modern Physics C (IJMPC) from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().