Are we really characterizing, a continuous fluid flow of both oil and water - in an oil reservoir - throughout the production cycle (solution gas drive: both black-oil & volatile-oil reservoirs)?
As long as the oil occurs as a continuous phase, a well will produce only oil (as the oil can easily move through the water-saturated reservoir rocks); however, once the oil in the reservoir becomes the discontinuous phase, the well will produce only water:
If yes, why do we require the characterization of an oil reservoir using multi-phase fluid flow (considering both oil & water migration explicitly and simultaneously)?
If not, how will we able to conserve mass and momentum balances in the event of either oil or water (migration) being discontinuous?
Whether the same mass and momentum balance equations applied to oil and water will remain justified for the cases, when
(a) reservoir pressure being greater than bubble-point pressure (producing GOR being equal to initial dissolved GOR);
(b) reservoir pressure being below bubble-point pressure but before reaching critical gas saturation (producing GOR being slightly lesser then the initial dissolved GOR);
(c) reservoir pressure being below bubble-point pressure, but after reaching critical gas saturation (producing GOR increasing steadily)?; &
(d) reservoir pressure being very small, where producing GOR keeps reducing.
Any possibility of oil being found in a finely dispersed state either in (b) or (c) or both - due to in-situ complications?
I refer you to two discussions which bear on the two problems of Eulerian two-fluid models closures: Turbulence and momentum interfacial transfer:
(6) Turbulence Closure for Two-Fluid RANS Modeling (researchgate.net)
(6) Interfacial Transfer Closure for Two-Fluid RANS Modeling (researchgate.net)
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