Lattice Boltzmann Study on Noncontinuum Flow and Mass Transfer of Shale gas in complex porous media

China has been one of the three pillars in global shale gas production due to the rapid developments in its shale gas extraction and production over the last decade. Following the national strategic blueprint for the next decade, shale gas supply in China will make one of the most important contributions to our national natural gas industry. In this proposal, we focus on the noncontinuum flow and mass transfer of shale gas through use of both the theoretical analyses and lattice Boltzmann modeling. Meaningful statistical descriptions are conducted to characterize irregular morphology of shale. Based on these studies, we explore shale gas flow in complex shale structures from the pore scale to the representative elementary volume (REV) scale. The research outcomes will enrich the theory of noncontinuum gas transport in porous media, and provide novel physics-based models and analytical tools to describe shale gas transport at different scales.