The main aim of this paper is to present some new and general results, ap plicable to the the equations of two phase flow, as formulated in geothermal reservoir engineering. Two phase regions are important in many geothermal reservoirs, especially at depths of order several hundred metres, where ris ing, essentially isothermal single phase liquid first begins to boil. The fluid then continues to rise, with its temperature and pressure closely following the saturation (boiling) curve appropriate to the fluid composition. Perhaps the two most interesting theoretical aspects of the (idealised) two phase flow equations in geothermal reservoir engineering are that firstly, only one component (water) is involved; and secondly, that the densities of the two phases are so different. This has led to the approximation of ignoring capillary pressure. The main aim of this paper is to analyse some of the consequences of this assumption, especially in relation to saturation changes within a uniform porous medium. A general analytic treatment of three dimensional flow is considered. Pre viously, three dimensional modelling in geothermal reservoirs have relied on numerical simulators. In contrast, most of the past analytic work has been restricted to one dimensional examples."

The main aim of this paper is to present some new and general results, ap plicable to the the equations of two phase flow, as formulated in geothermal reservoir engineering. Two phase regions are important in many geothermal reservoirs, especially at depths of order several hundred metres, where ris ing, essentially isothermal single phase liquid first begins to boil. The fluid then continues to rise, with its temperature and pressure closely following the saturation (boiling) curve appropriate to the fluid composition. Perhaps the two most interesting theoretical aspects of the (idealised) two phase flow equations in geothermal reservoir engineering are that firstly, only one component (water) is involved; and secondly, that the densities of the two phases are so different. This has led to the approximation of ignoring capillary pressure. The main aim of this paper is to analyse some of the consequences of this assumption, especially in relation to saturation changes within a uniform porous medium. A general analytic treatment of three dimensional flow is considered. Pre viously, three dimensional modelling in geothermal reservoirs have relied on numerical simulators. In contrast, most of the past analytic work has been restricted to one dimensional examples."

For several decades developments in porous media have taken place in almost independent areas. In civilengineering, many papers were publisheddealing with the foundations offlow and transport through porous media. The method used in most cases is called averaging, and the notion ofa representative elementary vol- ume(REV)playsanimportantrole. Inchemicalengineering,papersonconceptual models were written on the theory ofmixtures. Intheoretical physics and stochas- tic analysis, percolation theory has emerged, providing probabilistic models for systems where theconnectedness propertiesofsomecomponentdominatethebe- havior. In mathematics, atheoryhasbeendevelopedcalled homogenizationwhich deals with partial differential equations having rapidly oscillating coefficients. Early work in these and related areas was - among others - done by the fol- lowing scientists: Maxwell [Max81] and Rayleigh [Ray92] studied the effective conductivity of media with small concentrations of randomly and periodically, respectively, arranged inclusions. Einstein [Ein06] investigated the effective vis- cosityofsuspensions with hard spherical particles in compressible viscous fluids. Marchenko and Khrouslov [MK64] looked at the asymptotic nature of homog- enization; they introduced a general approach of averaging based on asymptotic tools which can handle a variety ofdifferent physical problems. Unfortunately, up to now, little efforthas been made to bridge the gap between these different fields of research. Consequently, many results were and are dis- covered independently, and scientists are almost unable to understand each other because the respective languages have been developing in different directions.