STONet: A novel neural operator for modeling solute transport in micro-cracked reservoirs

In this work, we develop a novel neural operator, the Solute Transport Operator Network (STONet), to efficiently model contaminant transport in micro-cracked reservoirs. The model combines different networks to encode heterogeneous properties effectively. By predicting the concentration rate, we are able to accurately model the transport process. Numerical experiments demonstrate that our neural operator approach achieves accuracy comparable to that of the finite element method. The previously introduced Enriched DeepONet architecture has been revised, motivated by the architecture of the popular multi-head attention of transformers, to improve its performance without increasing the compute cost. The computational efficiency of the proposed model enables rapid and accurate predictions of solute transport, facilitating the optimization of reservoir management strategies and the assessment of environmental impacts. The data and code for the paper will be published at https://github.com/ehsanhaghighat/STONet.