A Fully Equivalent Global Pressure Formulation for Three-Phase Compressible Flow

Abstract

We introduce a new global pressure formulation for immiscible three-phase compressible flows in porous media which is fully equivalent to the original equations, unlike the one introduced in \cite{CJ86}. In this formulation, the total volumetric flow of the three fluids and the global pressure follow a classical Darcy law, which simplifies the resolution of the pressure equation. However, this global pressure formulation exists only for Total Differential (TD) three-phase data, which depend only on two functions of saturations and global pressure: the global capillary pressure and the global mobility. Hence we introduce a class of interpolation which constructs such TD-three-phase data from any set of three two-phase data (for each pair of fluids) which satisfy a TD-compatibility condition.