Micromechanics of Hydro-Thermo-Mechanical Processes in Rock Accounting for Thermal Convection

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a comprehensive micromechanical study to improve the understanding of the coupled hydro-thermo-mechanical (HTM) processes during injection of pressurized cold fluid in permeable hot rock. At the microscopic level, it is expected that fluid flow–induced convective temperature changes in the voids will dominate the conductive heat flow from grain to grain. However, the coupled interactions between fluid flow, thermal convection, and conduction, and the resulting changes in local permeability due to thermo-poroelastic stresses at the grain scale remain poorly understood. Moreover, almost all previous studies at a large scale have focused only on thermal conduction. This study used the discrete-element method (DEM) modified to account for convective heat transport to model the particulate interactions between rock grains and between rock deformation, fluid pressure, and temperature. The results indicate that wellbore pressure, provided it is less than the fracturing threshold, has a less significant role in rock cooling around the wellbore, which is governed predominately by rock permeability, as previously thought. Different applied flow rates into the wellbore resulted in low and high wellbore pressures at short times in the absence of rock fracturing. As expected, convective heat transport dominated over conduction, resulting in a cooled ring around the wellbore without a significant thermal gradient zone due to conductive heat flow. As the fluid infiltrates and cools the rock, preferential fluid flow paths occur as fingering instabilities that are oriented toward the minimum principal horizontal stress even in the absence of initial local anisotropic porosity variations.