Research progress of numerical simulation on oil shale in-situ production

Oil shale is an unconventional energy with rich reserves. The in-situ production technology for oil shale dominated by electric heating and fluid heating is becoming the research emphasis in this field. The in-situ production process for oil shale involves the coupling of many physical and chemical processes such as heat transfer between fluid and formation, pyrolytic and chemical reaction of organic material, porosity and permeability change of the reservoir, oil and gas seepage and etc. Systematic numerical simulation for the in-situ production process is beneficial to the disclosure of in-situ production mechanism, optimization of in-situ production design scheme and economic effect evaluation of in-situ production. Summarized domestic and international research progress and status of numerical simulation on oil shale in-situ production, and analyzed core problems, main challenges, obtained progresses and bottleneck problems which should be solved eagerly in the numerical simulation research. It provides guidance and reference for the technical research related to oil shale in-situ production in the future, especially numerical simulation research.