InterPore2024

Plenary Speaker - Zhangxing (John) Chen

Zhangxing (John) Chen Eastern Institute of Technology, Ningbo, China / University of Calgary, Canada

Title: Reservoir Simulator Development: The Past, Present and Future Abstract: Reservoir simulators have been developed in the past 70 years. They have been widely used to predict, understand, and optimize complex physical processes in modeling and simulation of multiphase fluid flow in petroleum reservoirs. These simulators are important for understanding the fate and transport of chemical species and heat and maximizing the economic and environmental performance of exploration and production of fossil fuel energy. The development of reservoir simulators has been concentrated on conventional oil and gas reservoirs in the last century, and efficient black oil, compositional and thermal simulators have been successful in their application to the recovery of conventional oil and gas resources. As these conventional resources dwindle, the recovery of unconventional oil and gas (such as heavy oil, oil sands, tight and shale oil and gas, and coalbed methane) resources is now at the center stage. While the development of unconventional reservoir simulators has been focused on in this century, a lot of challenges still exist because of the significant differences between conventional and unconventional reservoirs in their multi-scale phenomena, fluid occurrence states, flow mechanisms, and production technologies. The speaker has engaged in the development of reservoir simulators for over 30 years. His group has developed parallel and intelligent simulators that can efficiently simulate complex fluid flow problems with giga (billion) grid block cells and reduce simulation time from days to seconds. For over ten years, his group has also incorporated artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing algorithms into these reservoir simulators. Fast and accurate simulators can increase energy production due to full utilization of available data and better understanding of the chemical and physical mechanisms involved, process designs and uncertainty analyses. In this plenary presentation, the speaker will give an overview on the development of conventional and unconventional reservoir simulators, the incorporation of parallel and AI algorithms into these simulators, and the quantum computing potential to solve reservoir simulation problems. The present status, existing challenges, and future prospects on reservoir simulators will be emphasized in this plenary presentation. Bio: Professor Chen holds Chair Professorship at Eastern Institute of Technology, Ningbo, China and NSERC/Energi Simulation Industrial Research Chair and Alberta Innovates Industrial Chair at the University of Calgary, Canada. His PhD (1991) is from Purdue University, USA. He has authored/co-authored 25 books, published over 1,100 research articles, and owned 41 patents. Dr. Chen is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Canadian Academy of Engineering and Energy Institute of Canada, and an Academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering and European Union Academy of Sciences. Dr. Chen has received numerous prestigious awards, such as The Friendship Medal of The People’s Republic of China, NSERC’s Synergy Award for Innovation, The Outstanding Leadership in Alberta Technology Award, IBM Faculty Award, Imperial Oil Research Award, Fields-CAIMS Prize, Gerald J. Ford Research Fellowship Award, and SPE’s Technical Excellence and Achievements Award. According to Elsevier Scopus, his publications have been ranked #1 in terms of the overall scholarship in reservoir simulation in the world. His research interest is in Reservoir Engineering, Reservoir Simulation and Hydrogen Production.