Expertise

The Coal Seam Reservoirs team applies experimental characterisation of gas migration processes with further development of reservoir simulation models to improve the understanding of natural gas production from coal seam reservoirs. We demonstrate our expertise in a large range of projects with industry and publications in international journals.

Our main areas of expertise include:

• Reservoir processes
• Carbon dioxide storage 

Reservoir processes

We have expertise in:

• permeability behaviour in coal seam reservoirs - permeability in coal reservoirs is sensitive to the effective stress and the shrinkage or swelling of coal with gas desorption or adsorption. We have developed a methodology to characterise this permeability behaviour through laboratory experiments on core samples.
• coupled flow and geomechanical processes in coal seams during gas production – FLAMED, a coupled model, has been developed to investigate the impact of geomechanical processes on gas migration.
• improved adsorption isotherms in reservoir simulation

  Experimental characterisation of gas migration is used to further develop reservoir simulation models.
• coal swelling with gas adsorption
• the role of water in gas adsorption
• dual porosity gas migration – our methodologies provide improved descriptions of the diffusion of gas from micro to macro porosity coal systems
• tracer gases in coal seam methane – identification of appropriate tracers and comprehensive tracer studies for coal seam reservoirs
• enhanced coal seam methane – established capabilities in the characterisation, planning and field conduct of studies on enhanced coal seam methane production.

Carbon dioxide storage

We have expertise in:

• reservoir simulation – development of the comprehensive simulator SIMEDWinCO2. Development of the CO2 wellbore hydraulics model for injection wells.
• laboratory characterisation – core flooding rigs to describe the gas displacement mechanisms in geological formations.