Preprint A449/2006
The Riemann solution for the injection of steam and nitrogen in a porous medium
Dan Marchesin | Lambert, Wanderson
Keywords: Porous Medium | steamdrive | distillation | multiphase
Conservation laws have been used to model a variety of physical phenomena and therefore the theory for this class of equations is well developed. However, in many problems, such as transport of hot fluids with mass interchange between phases balance laws are required to describe the flow. Using the model proposed by Bruining et. al., we formulate a system that describes the flow of nitrogen, steam and water in a porous medium. We neglect compressibility, heat conductivity and capillarity effects and present a physical model for steam injection based on the mass balance and energy conservation equations. We describe a formalism for solving Riemann problem associated to this class of balance equations for a $3\times 3$ system. It is a step towards obtaining a general method for a wide class of balance equations with phase changes.