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Abstract Spontaneous imbibition of fracturing fluid into shale matrix is one of the primary reasons for the low flowback rate in shale gas wells after the hydraulic fracturing. This leads to concerns of impacts on both environment and shale gas production. A direct pore‐scale simulation is crucial to gain a deep understanding of spontaneous imbibition behavior and its impacts. The porous structures in the shale matrix are characterized by not only a geometrical complexity but also a mixed wettability, which bring great challenges to simulation methods. An improved pseudo‐potential lattice Boltzmann method is proposed to simulate the spontaneous imbibition behavior in a reproduced three‐dimensional porous structure of shale. The results show that the nanoscale hydrophilic pores provide the driving force and a storage place for the residual treatment fluid. The pore size and wettability heterogeneity lead to the nonuniform menisci propagation and fracturing fluid distribution in the model. Specifically, the fracturing fluid imbibed quicker in the larger pores at the early stage and gradually migrated into the smaller pores during the process. With a limited volume of the fracturing fluid, a portion of the larger pores was finally reopened. The analysis of saturation and apparent gas permeability data during the spontaneous imbibition process showed a great recovery of the model permeability along with the reopened pores. These results provide direct evidence of the residual fracturing fluid migration pattern in the shale reservoir and its influence on shale gas production.
Zheng et al. (2018) studied this question.