Coupled Fluid Flow and Geomechanics in Coalbed Methane Recovery Study

In this paper, we present a coupled fluid flow and geomechanics model for simulating coalbed methane recovery. In the model, the fluid flow process is simulated with a triple porosity/dual permeability representation, and the coupling effects of effective stress and matrix swelling/shrinkage approach are simulated with a coupled fluid flow, geomechanics and gas adsorption/desorption model. The mathematical model is implemented with a fully implicit finite volume method and simulation is conducted to evaluate the effect of coupled fluid flow, geomechanics, and gas adsorption/desorption.