Journal of the Korean Society of Mineral and Energy Resources Engineers ISSN:2288-0291(Print) 2288-2790(Online) 한국자원공학회지

Streamline simulation has been extensively used in petroleum engineering due to the rapidity in computation and the freedom from numerical dispersion. We applied the streamline simulation for the modeling of solute transport in a single fracture and verified the streamline simulation with experimental data. In order to model dispersive transport, we employed a new term, the modified Peclet value, defined as the relative extent of advection to dispersion along streamlines. It was observed that the tracer breakthrough curves from the simulation match those from the experiments well. In addition, the tracer displacement profiles from the simulation also show resemblance to those from the experiments. Transport simulation was performed by allocating different modified Peclet values along streamlines. After that, the result was compared with the simulation result using a single representative modified Peclet value over the entire flow domain. Although streamlines actually have different modified Peclet values, its effect was found to be insignificant. Therefore, a representative modified Peclet value can be used for modeling transport through the whole streamlines in a single fracture.