The underground disposal of drill cuttings waste is a common practice for the gas/oil industry to achieve zero-discharge sustainable development. In this study, a numerical modeling approach was developed to simulate the slurry flow for underground disposal of drill cuttings waste. The modeling approach was coupled with and implemented in the well-known general purpose subsurface multiphase flow simulator, TOUGH2. The new modeling approach treats the slurry flow behavior in subsurface systems as Bingham plastic liquid, with a linear relationship representing the yield stress and the concentration of the gelatinizer in the slurry. In addition, the precipitation-dissolution process was taken into account for solid-aqueous phase changes of the water-slurry mixture under and over the threshold pressure. The model has been verified by the analytical solution of a transient flow of single-phase Bingham fluid, and has further been tested by modeling field-scale injection of drill cutting wastes into a multi-layered geological formation in Texas. A hypothetical model has also been used to conduct sensitivity analysis of the impact of slurry density, injection depth and injection pattern on the storage formation performance. The results revealed that the effect of injection volume is greater than the mass on pressure buildup. In addition, a short period of intermittent reinjection can lead to an earlier formation breakdown due to particle sedimentation and reduce the storage capacity. The developed model can be used to evaluate the prediction of slurry transport, storage capacity, pressure distribution, and the formation breakdown time in a drill cuttings waste disposal project.

钻屑的地下处置是天然气/石油行业实现零排放可持续发展的普遍做法。在这项研究中，开发了一种数值建模方法来模拟泥浆流，用于地下处理钻屑废物。该建模方法已与著名的通用地下多相流仿真器TOUGH2耦合并在其中实现。新的建模方法将浆液在地下系统中的流动特性视为Bingham可塑液体，其线性关系表示屈服应力和浆液中胶凝剂的浓度。另外，考虑到在阈值压力之上和之下的水浆混合物的固-水相变化，考虑了沉淀-溶解过程。该模型已通过单相Bingham流体瞬变流的解析解决方案进行了验证，并已通过对在德克萨斯州多层地质构造中钻探废料的现场规模注入建模进行了进一步测试。假设模型也已用于对浆液密度，注入深度和注入方式对储层形成性能的影响进行敏感性分析。结果显示，进样量对压力累积的影响大于质量。另外，短时间的间歇性回注会由于颗粒沉降而导致较早的地层破裂，并降低了储存能力。开发的模型可用于评估泥浆输送，存储量，压力分布，