Prospects for subsurface CO<sub>2</sub> sequestration

Firoozabadi, Abbas; Myint, Philip C.

doi:10.1002/aic.12287

Cited by 105 publications

(74 citation statements)

References 37 publications

(62 reference statements)

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“…CO 2 geological storage is a promising means to mitigate CO 2 emission [1][2][3][4][5] and storage in deep saline aquifers appears to hold the largest potential capacity [4,[6][7][8]. The sequestration capacity, long-term CO 2 behavior in receptor formations, and the quantification of possible CO 2 leaks are the main concerns [2,4,9,10], and there remains a need to study the potential mobility of CO 2 dissolved in brines over a wide range of spatial and temporal scales [4,9,11], the CO 2 concentration distribution in saline aquifers, as well as the density distribution in geological media [8].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modeling mass transfer of CO2 in brine at high pressures by chemical potential gradient

Lü

et al. 2013

Sci. China Chem.

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To investigate long-term CO 2 behavior in geological formations and quantification of possible CO 2 leaks, it is crucial to investigate the potential mobility of CO 2 dissolved in brines over a wide range of spatial and temporal scales and density distributions in geological media. In this work, the mass transfer of aqueous CO 2 in brines has been investigated by means of a chemical potential gradient model based on non-equilibrium thermodynamics in which the statistical associating fluid theory equation of state was used to calculate the fugacity coefficient of CO 2 in brine. The investigation shows that the interfacial concentration of aqueous CO 2 and the corresponding density both increase with increasing pressure and decreasing temperature; the effective diffusion coefficients decrease initially and then increase with increasing pressure; and the density of the CO 2 -disolved brines increases with decreasing CO 2 pressure in the CO 2 dissolution process. The aqueous CO 2 concentration profiles obtained by the chemical potential gradient model are considerably different from those obtained by the concentration gradient model, which shows the importance of considering non-ideality, especially when the pressure is high.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modeling mass transfer of CO2 in brine at high pressures by chemical potential gradient

Lü

et al. 2013

Sci. China Chem.

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“…Among possible geological sites for CO 2 sequestration, saline aquifers are promising candidates because, unlike hydrocarbon reservoirs, they are evenly distributed in various parts of the world 3,4 . Upon injection in a saline aquifer, the less dense CO 2 rises above the aqueous phase and spreads laterally under the upper impermeable cap rock.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of pressure, salt concentration, and temperature on the convective dissolution of carbon dioxide in aqueous solutions

Loodts

Rongy

Wit

2014

Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science

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The convective dissolution of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) in salted water is theoretically studied to determine how parameters such as CO 2 pressure, salt concentration and temperature impact the short-time characteristics of the buoyancy-driven instability.On the basis of a parameter-free dimensionless model, we perform a linear stability analysis of the time-dependent concentration profiles of CO 2 diffusing into the aqueous solution. We explicit the procedure to transform the predicted dimensionless growth rate and wavelength of the convective pattern into dimensional ones for typical laboratory-scale experiments in conditions close to room temperature and atmospheric pressure. This allows to investigate the implicit influence of the experimental parameters on the characteristic length and time scales of the instability. We predict that increasing CO 2 pressure, or decreasing salt concentration or temperature destabilizes the system, leading to a faster dissolution of CO 2 into salted water.PACS numbers: 47.20.Bp, 47.56.+r a) Electronic mail: vloodts@ulb.ac.be 1 When carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) dissolves in an aqueous solution, a buoyancy-driven fingering instability can develop because of the formation of a denser layer of CO 2 -rich solution on top of the less dense water. By a theoretical analysis, we predict how the short-time characteristics of this instability depend on experimental control parameters. To do so, we use a linear stability analysis based on a parameter-free model along with empirical correlations to compute the characteristic time and length scales of the fingering instability. We find that the growth rate of the convective instability increases with increasing CO 2 pressure or decreasing salt concentration or temperature. These results allow to interpret experimental data 1,2 on the impact of salt concentration and gaseous CO 2 pressure on the convective dissolution of CO 2 . Another main result of our analysis is that temperature has only a slight effect for CO 2 pressures close to atmospheric pressure. This study therefore suggests that carefully controlling the temperature of the setup is not needed for reproducibility of experimental studies of convective dissolution of CO 2 in laboratory conditions.

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“…One of the causes of the global warming is the greenhouse gasses emission, i.e., the release of CO 2 into the atmosphere due to the use of fossil fuels in the industry activities such as power plant, refineries, petrochemical industries, oil and gas processing, etc. The amount of CO 2 concentration in the atmosphere has steadily increased particularly in the last century, from 280 ppm (prior to the industrial revolution) to 390 ppm (at the current time) with annual increase of 1 to 2 ppm [Firoozabadi and Cheng, 2010]. If we let the CO 2 concentration increases continuously in the atmosphere then there will be several consequences that mankind may face in the future such as the continuous increase of Earth's temperature, the increase of ocean acidification that perhaps affect the marine life, etc [Firoozabadi and Cheng, 2010].…”

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confidence: 99%

“…The amount of CO 2 concentration in the atmosphere has steadily increased particularly in the last century, from 280 ppm (prior to the industrial revolution) to 390 ppm (at the current time) with annual increase of 1 to 2 ppm [Firoozabadi and Cheng, 2010]. If we let the CO 2 concentration increases continuously in the atmosphere then there will be several consequences that mankind may face in the future such as the continuous increase of Earth's temperature, the increase of ocean acidification that perhaps affect the marine life, etc [Firoozabadi and Cheng, 2010]. To tackle this issue, a mechanism has been proposed to mitigate the CO 2 by injecting it into the subsurface geological formations, which is called as CO 2 geological sequestration.…”

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confidence: 99%

Density-Driven Flow Simulation in Anisotropic Porous Media: Application to CO2 Geological Sequestration

2014

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Carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) sequestration in saline aquifers is considered as one of the most viable and promising ways to reduce CO 2 concentration in the atmosphere. CO 2 is injected into deep saline formations at supercritical state where its density is smaller than the hosting brine. This motivates an upward motion and eventually CO 2 is trapped beneath the cap rock. The trapped CO 2 slowly dissolves into the brine causing the density of the mixture to become larger than the host brine. This causes gravitational instabilities that is propagated and magnified with time. In this kind of density-driven flows, the CO 2 -rich brines migrate downward while the brines with low CO 2 concentration move upward. With respect to the properties of the subsurface aquifers, there are instances where saline formations can possess anisotropy with respect to their hydraulic properties. Such anisotropy can have significant effect on the onset and propagation of flow instabilities. Anisotropy is predicted to be more influential in dictating the direction of the convective flow. To account for permeability anisotropy, the method of multipoint flux approximation (MPFA) in the framework of finite differences schemes is used. The MPFA method requires more point stencil than the traditional two-point flux approximation (TPFA). For example, calculation of one flux component requires 6-point stencil and 18-point stencil in 2-D and 3-D cases, respectively. As consequence, the matrix of coefficient for obtaining the pressure fields will be quite complex. Therefore, we combine the MPFA method with the experimenting pressure field technique in which the problem is reduced to solving multitude of local problems and the global matrix of coefficients is constructed automatically, which significantly reduces the complexity. We present several numerical scenarios of density-driven flow simulation in homogeneous, layered, and heterogeneous anisotropic porous media. The numerical results emphasize the significant effects of anisotropy in driving the migration of dissolved CO 2 along the principal direction of anisotropy even if the porous medium is highly heterogeneous. Furthermore, the impacts of the increase of density difference between the brine and the CO 2 -saturated brine with respect to the onset time of convection, the CO 2 flux, and the CO 2 total dissolved mass are also discussed in this paper. Motivation and backgroundNowadays, global warming issue has become the world-widely discussed topic due to the change of climate on the Earth. One of the causes of the global warming is the greenhouse gasses emission, i.e., the release of CO 2 into the atmosphere due to the use of fossil fuels in the industry activities such as power plant, refineries, petrochemical industries, oil and gas processing, etc. The amount of CO 2 concentration in the atmosphere has steadily increased particularly in the last century, from 280 ppm (prior to the industrial revolution) to 390 ppm (at the current time) with annual increase of 1 to 2 ppm [Firoozabadi ...

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Prospects for subsurface CO₂ sequestration

Cited by 105 publications

References 37 publications

Modeling mass transfer of CO2 in brine at high pressures by chemical potential gradient

Modeling mass transfer of CO2 in brine at high pressures by chemical potential gradient

Impact of pressure, salt concentration, and temperature on the convective dissolution of carbon dioxide in aqueous solutions

Density-Driven Flow Simulation in Anisotropic Porous Media: Application to CO2 Geological Sequestration

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Prospects for subsurface CO2 sequestration

Cited by 105 publications

References 37 publications

Modeling mass transfer of CO2 in brine at high pressures by chemical potential gradient

Modeling mass transfer of CO2 in brine at high pressures by chemical potential gradient

Impact of pressure, salt concentration, and temperature on the convective dissolution of carbon dioxide in aqueous solutions

Density-Driven Flow Simulation in Anisotropic Porous Media: Application to CO2 Geological Sequestration

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Prospects for subsurface CO₂ sequestration