Modeling geological carbon storage represents a new and substantial challenge for the subsurface geosciences. To increase understanding and make good engineering decisions, containment processes and large-scale storage operations must be simulated in a thousand-year perspective. Large differences in spatial and temporal scales make it prohibitively expensive to compute the fate of injected CO 2 using traditional 3D simulators. Instead, accurate forecast can be computed using simplified models that are adapted to the specific setting of the bouyancy-driven migration of the light fluid phase. This paper presents a family of vertically integrated models for studying the combined large-scale and long-term effects of structural, residual, and solubility trapping of CO 2 . The models are based on an assumption of a sharp interface separating CO 2 and brine and can provide a detailed inventory of the injected CO 2 volumes over periods of thousands of years within reasonable computational time. To be compatible with simulation tools used in industry, the models are formulated in a black-oil framework. The models are implemented in MRST-co2lab, which is an open community
MRST-co2lab is a collection of open-source computational tools for modeling large-scale and long-time migration of CO 2 in conductive aquifers, combining ideas from basin modeling, computational geometry, hydrology, and reservoir simulation. Herein, we employ the methods of MRST-co2lab to study long-term CO 2 storage on the scale of hundreds of megatonnes. We consider public data sets of two aquifers from the Norwegian North Sea and use geometrical methods for identifying structural traps, percolation-type methods for identifying potential spill paths, and vertical-equilibrium methods for efficient simulation of structural, residual, and solubility trapping in a thousand-year perspective. In particular, we investigate how data resolution affects estimates of storage capacity and discuss workflows for identifying good injection sites and optimizing injection strategies.
Geological carbon storage represents a substantial challenge for the subsurface geosciences. Knowledge of the subsurface can be captured in a quantitative form using computational methods developed within petroleum production. However, to provide good estimates of the likely outcomes over thousands of years, traditional 3D simulation methods should be combined with other techniques developed specifically to study large-scale, long-term migration problems, e.g., in basin modeling. A number of such methods have been developed as a separate module in the open-source Matlab Reservoir Simulation Toolbox (MRST).In this paper, we present a set of tools provided by this module, consisting of geometrical and percolation type methods for computing structural traps and spill paths below a sealing caprock. Using concepts from water management, these tools can be applied on large-scale aquifer models to quickly estimate potential for structural trapping, determine spill paths from potential injection points, suggest optimal injection locations, etc. We demonstrate this by a series of examples applied on publicly available datasets. The corresponding source code is provided along with the examples.
In this paper we study the use of Virtual Element Method (VEM) for geomechanics. Our emphasis is on applications to reservoir simulations. The physical processes behind the formation of the reservoirs, such as sedimentation, erosion and faulting, lead to complex geometrical structures. A minimal representation, with respect to the physical parameters of the system, then naturally leads to general polyhedral grids. Numerical methods which can directly handle this representation will be highly favorable, in particular in the setting of advanced work-flows. The virtual element method is a promising candidate to solve the linear elasticity equations on such models. In this paper, we investigate some of the limits of the VEM method when used on reservoir models. First, we demonstrate that care must be taken to make the method robust for highly elongated cells, which is common in these applications, and show the importance of calculating forces in terms of traction on the boundary of the elements for elongated distorted cells. Second, we study the effect of triangulations on the surfaces of curved faces, which also naturally occur in subsurface models. We also demonstrate how a more stable stabilization term for reservoir application can be derived.
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