Cement degradation in CO2 storage sites: a review on potential applications of nanomaterials

Abstract

Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) has been employed to reduce global warming, which is one of the critical environmental issues gained the attention of scientific and industrial communities worldwide. Once implemented successfully, CCS can store at least 5 billion tons of CO 2 per year as an effective and technologically safe method. However, there have been a few issues raised in recent years, indicating the potential leakages paths created during and after injection. One of the major issues might be the chemical interaction of supercritical CO 2 with the cement, which may lead to the partial or total loss of the cement sheath. There have been many approaches presented to improve the physical and mechanical properties of the cement against CO 2 attack such as changing the water-to-cement ratio, employing pozzolanic materials, and considering non-Portland cements. However, a limited success has been reported to the application of these approaches once implemented in a real-field condition. To date, only a few studies reported the application of nanoparticles as sophisticated additives which can reinforce oil well cements. This paper provides a review on the possible application of nanomaterials in the cement industry where physical and mechanical characteristics of the cement can be modified to have a better resistance against corrosive environments such as CO 2 storage sites. The results obtained indicated that adding 0.5 wt% of Carbon NanoTubes (CNTs) and NanoGlass Flakes (NGFs) can reinforce the thermal stability and coating characteristics of the cement which are required to increase the chance of survival in a CO 2 sequestrated site. Nanosilica can also be a good choice and added to the cement by as much as 3.0 wt% to improve pozzolanic reactivity and thermal stability as per the reports of recent studies.

Recent Progress in Nanomaterials for Modern Concrete Infrastructure: Advantages and Challenges

“…The cement-based materials can be mixed with nanomaterials such as nano-silica (nano-SiO 2 ), nano-alumina (nano-Al 2 O 3 ), nano-ferric oxide (nano-Fe 2 O 3 ), nano-titanium oxide (nano-TiO 2 ), carbon nanotubes (CNTs), graphene and graphene oxide. In recent years, several researchers [29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49] have studied the incorporation of nanomaterials into cement-based materials. The mixture of cementitious composites and nanomaterials can increase the mechanical strength of the resulting concrete structures.…”

Wellbore integrity in a saline aquifer: Experimental steel-cement interface degradation under supercritical CO2 conditions representative of Brazil’s Parana basin

“…2-5) show the effect of reducing cement porosity since CaCO 3 acts as an expansive pore blocking agent (Fig. 5B) and starts to fill the voids (Bagheri et al, 2018;Tiong et al, 2019). Thus, the reduction of porosity prevents further advances in the cement degradation front.…”

“…Currently, Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is the only viable technology proven to partially mitigate the gaseous emissions from large point sources (Lavrov and Torsaeter, 2018;Tiong et al, 2019). Through the implementation of CCS, it is possible to conduct long-term CO 2 geological storage and reduce the impact of global warming.…”

“…Through the implementation of CCS, it is possible to conduct long-term CO 2 geological storage and reduce the impact of global warming. CCS can be considered as a transition technology since it is a method which requires intensive use of materials and energy, however, once it is implemented, a billion tonnes of CO 2 emission per year could be avoided (Metz et al, 2005;Tiong et al, 2019).…”

“…While an effective geological formation-cement-casing bond is responsible for preventing undesirable fluids migration (Kiran et al, 2017;Omosebi et al, 2016), materials applied in well construction (cement and steel casing) may be susceptible to chemical and physical changes over time (Kiran et al, 2017;Tiong et al, 2019). Carbonic acid (H 2 CO 3 ) resulting from CO 2 dissolution in brine is especially aggressive to the wellbore materials, being responsible for deep changes in the cement matrix and causing steel casing corrosion, thus significantly compromising the integrity of the cement-casing interface (Carroll et al, 2016;Celia et al, 2015).…”