New Software Release

Release highlights

The release of Intersect™ 2023.4 delivers many key features in CO2 storage capabilities, physics, performance, usability, and more. Among others, these features include the Spycher and Pruess solubility model, multiple hydrocarbon component solubility in water, and additional feature support for full-graphics processing unit (GPU) functionality.

Learn more about INTERSECT

Key enhancements

Physics and CO2 storage

• You can now use the Spycher and Pruess model to calculate the mutual solubility of CO2 and water in thermal models. The model provides accurate results for pressures up to 600 bar and temperatures in the range of 12 to 300°C. The salinity effect on solubility is modeled for up to three types of salts: NaCl (0-6 molal), CaCl2 (0-5 molal), and CaCO3 (0-1 molal).

• The isothermal component solubility in water functionality now allows multiple hydrocarbon components to be dissolved in the aqueous phase. This extends workflows such as CO2 storage that contain impurities or oil and gas reservoirs, where the solubility of components such as CH4 and H2S is significant. You can also use the Ezrokhi model to calculate the density and viscosity of the aqueous phase, with the impact of multiple dissolved hydrocarbon components.

• To model the solubility of hydrocarbon components in applications such as CO2 storage, you can now enter K-value tables in isothermal compositional simulations to provide salinity-dependent solubility in the aqueous phase. Alongside the conventional gas-water ratio tables, this alternative format provides flexibility in the input of solubility data.

• In reactions, usually a component only appears as either a reactant or a product. In some advanced applications a component can appear as both a reactant and a product, for example when modeling bacterial growth and decay in hydrogen storage. To enable this, the new AllowComponentAsReactantAndProduct field has been added to the reaction node.

Performance

• The brine fluid model is now supported in full-GPU and single-component brine simulations running on GPU hardware should see the benefits of full-GPU acceleration. Multi-component brine, electroneutrality assumption, and brine with reactions are partially calculated on the CPU.

• You can now run simulations using tracers on GPU. Tracers are useful for following the movement of marked fluid elements in the reservoir.

Usability

• You can now deactivate 3D output with a single switch that overrides all other specifications in a simulation case. This makes it much simpler to reduce unnecessary output in use cases such as ensemble modeling.