Numerical simulation of constant pressure steam injection into a homogeneous porous medium

Steam injection is an effective technique to restore groundwater aquifers contaminated by nonaqueous phase liquids. The method, traditionally used in petroleum engineering to recover crude oil residues, involves introducing the water vapor into a contaminated zone to drive contaminants out of the subsurface. In this paper an efficient multiphase flow model, called the multiphase mixture model (MMM), was applied to study the dynamic processes of steam injection into a horizontal, water-saturated reservoir with constant injection pressures. The MMM model was previously developed and shown to be computationally very efficient in various applications to two-phase flow and heat transfer problems: The numerical results revealed many important and complex transport phenomena such as steam backflow, gravity override, and liquid recirculating flow that occur in the constant pressure injection process. The advancement and shape of the steam front were also predicted. Parametric studies by varying the constant inlet pressures at 164, 500, and 2000 Pa, respectively, were performed to assess the effects of the injection pressure on the steam front propagation as well as the effectiveness of contaminant recovery.