Effects of CO<sub>2</sub> Geosequestration on Opalinus Clay

oleh: Taimoor Asim, Haval Kukha Hawez

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: MDPI AG 2024-05-01

Deskripsi

CO<sub>2</sub> geosequestration is an important contributor to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 13, i.e., Climate Action, which states a global Net-Zero CO<sub>2</sub> emissions by 2050. A potential impact of CO<sub>2</sub> geosequestration in depleted oil and gas reservoirs is the variations in induced pressure across the caprocks, which can lead to significant local variations in CO<sub>2</sub> saturation. A detailed understanding of the relationship between the pressure gradient across the caprock and local CO<sub>2</sub> concentration is of utmost importance for assessing the potential of CO<sub>2</sub> geosequestration. Achieving this through experimental techniques is extremely difficult, and thus, we employ a coupled Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Finite Element Method (FEM) based solver to mimic sub-critical CO<sub>2</sub> injection in Opalinus Clay under various pressure gradients across the sample. The geomechanical and multiphase flow modelling utilising Darcy Law helps evaluate local variations in CO<sub>2</sub> concentration in Opalinus Clay. Well-validated numerical results indicate favourable sub-critical CO<sub>2</sub> geosequestration under a positive pressure gradient across Opalinus Clay. In the absence of a positive pressure gradient, a peak CO<sub>2</sub> concentration of 5% has been recorded, which increases substantially (above 90%) as the pressure gradient across the sample increases.