Effects of geological heterogeneity on fluid distribution and pressure propagation in a shallow, stacked aquifer system at the ECCSEL Svelvik CO2 Field Lab, Norway

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anja Sundal ◽  
Alv Arne Grimstad ◽  
Ulrich W. Weber ◽  
Wolfram Kurschner ◽  
Klaus Hagby ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Co2 Storage ◽  
Test Site ◽  
Shallow Aquifer ◽  
Fluid Distribution ◽  
Co2 Injection ◽  
Climate Mitigation ◽  
Monitoring Methods ◽  
Geological Heterogeneity ◽  
Aquifer System ◽  
Groundwater Flux

<p>The ECCSEL Svelvik CO2 Field Lab is a test site for shallow CO2 injection operated by SINTEF, where the aim is to improve monitoring techniques and extend the knowledge base for storing CO2 underground in deep saline aquifers as a climate mitigation strategy. The test site is located in a Holocene ice contact deposit near Drammen in the Oslofjord. Test injection is possible at 65 m depth. There has been extensive research focused on increasing the understanding of monitoring methods for deep injection of CO2 and the (short term) migration of CO2, based on experiments performed in this shallow aquifer. To maximize the value of data collected in the shallow experiments a solid geological model is fundamental to enable prediction of how water and gas will behave in the reservoir. Various thicknesses of reservoir layers and degree of internal heterogeneity (clinoforms, unconformities, faults) are observed. Analysis of new data from wells (cuttings sediment samples, wire line logs) and comparison with existing data (e.g. seismic lines, georadar profiles) indicate upwards shallowing and upwards freshening trends through the stratigraphic succession, i.e. variation in palynomorph assemblages. Groundwater flux and aquifer connectivity was evaluated through comparison of water chemistry, noble gas content (the ICO2P project) as well as resistivity- and pressure-logging in upper (fresh) and lower (saline) parts. Analysis of the tidal pressure signal in the deep part of the aquifer gives an indication of the degree of communication between the layers of the aquifer. The areal extent of (semi-)sealing layers of mud, as well as intra-reservoir geological heterogeneity (inclined, graded sandy beds with thin, muddy lamina) affects CO2 distribution in the test reservoir, and is likely to lead buoyant fluids along preferential flow paths. Facies models include North-South progradational patterns and are represented in anisotropic property distributions (Petrel - Schlumberger) for fluid flow simulations (Eclipse - Schlumberger). Predicted CO2 flux is towards the North, below what appears to be locally extensive flow baffles. Integrated data analysis has improved the geological understanding of the Svelvik stacked aquifer system, which may be utilized in future applications to improve monitoring methods for safe large-scale CO2 storage.</p>

scholarly journals Salinity Contributions from Geothermal Waters to the Rio Grande and Shallow Aquifer System in the Transboundary Mesilla (United States)/Conejos-Médanos (Mexico) Basin

Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 33
Author(s):  
Jeff D. Pepin ◽  
Andrew J. Robertson ◽  
Shari A. Kelley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Rio Grande ◽  
Shallow Aquifer ◽  
Geothermal Systems ◽  
Water Supplies ◽  
Dissolved Solids ◽  
Aquifer System ◽  
Groundwater Flux ◽  
Shallow Aquifer System ◽  
Mexico Basin

Freshwater scarcity has raised concerns about the long-term availability of the water supplies within the transboundary Mesilla (United States)/Conejos-Médanos (Mexico) Basin in Texas, New Mexico, and Chihuahua. Analysis of legacy temperature data and groundwater flux estimates indicates that the region’s known geothermal systems may contribute more than 45,000 tons of dissolved solids per year to the shallow aquifer system, with around 8500 tons of dissolved solids being delivered from localized groundwater upflow zones within those geothermal systems. If this salinity flux is steady and eventually flows into the Rio Grande, it could account for 22% of the typical average annual cumulative Rio Grande salinity that leaves the basin each year—this salinity proportion could be much greater in times of low streamflow. Regional water level mapping indicates upwelling brackish waters flow towards the Rio Grande and the southern part of the Mesilla portion of the basin with some water intercepted by wells in Las Cruces and northern Chihuahua. Upwelling waters ascend from depths greater than 1 km with focused flow along fault zones, uplifted bedrock, and/or fractured igneous intrusions. Overall, this work demonstrates the utility of using heat as a groundwater tracer to identify salinity sources and further informs stakeholders on the presence of several brackish upflow zones that could notably degrade the quality of international water supplies in this developed drought-stricken region.

Experimental and Modeling Study of Salt Precipitation During Injection of CO2 Contaminated With H2S Into Depleted Gas Fields in the Northeast of the Netherlands

SPE Journal ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (06) ◽  
pp. 1058-1068 ◽  
Author(s):  
P.. Bolourinejad ◽  
R.. Herber
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Carbonic Acid ◽  
Co2 Storage ◽  
Mineral Dissolution ◽  
Co2 Injection ◽  
Salt Precipitation ◽  
Geological Time ◽  
Core Samples ◽  
Carbon Dioxide Co2 ◽  
Gas Fields

Summary Depleted gas fields are among the most probable candidates for subsurface storage of carbon dioxide (CO2). With proven reservoir and qualified seal, these fields have retained gas over geological time scales. However, unlike methane, injection of CO2 changes the pH of the brine because of the formation of carbonic acid. Subsequent dissolution/precipitation of minerals changes the porosity/permeability of reservoir and caprock. Thus, for adequate, safe, and effective CO2 storage, the subsurface system needs to be fully understood. An important aspect for subsurface storage of CO2 is purity of this gas, which influences risk and cost of the process. To investigate the effects of CO2 plus impurities in a real case example, we have carried out medium-term (30-day) laboratory experiments (300 bar, 100°C) on reservoir and caprock core samples from gas fields in the northeast of the Netherlands. In addition, we attempted to determine the maximum allowable concentration of one of the possible impurities in the CO2 stream [hydrogen sulfide (H2S)] in these fields. The injected gases—CO2, CO2+100 ppm H2S, and CO2+5,000 ppm H2S—were reacting with core samples and brine (81 g/L Na+, 173 g/L Cl−, 22 g/L Ca2+, 23 g/L Mg2+, 1.5 g/L K+, and 0.2 g/L SO42−). Before and after the experiments, the core samples were analyzed by scanning electron microscope (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) for mineralogical variations. The permeability of the samples was also measured. After the experiments, dissolution of feldspars, carbonates, and kaolinite was observed as expected. In addition, we observed fresh precipitation of kaolinite. However, two significant results were obtained when adding H2S to the CO2 stream. First, we observed precipitation of sulfate minerals (anhydrite and pyrite). This differs from results after pure CO2 injection, where dissolution of anhydrite was dominant in the samples. Second, severe salt precipitation took place in the presence of H2S. This is mainly caused by the nucleation of anhydrite and pyrite, which enabled halite precipitation, and to a lesser degree by the higher solubility of H2S in water and higher water content of the gas phase in the presence of H2S. This was confirmed by the use of CMG-GEM (CMG 2011) modeling software. The precipitation of halite, anhydrite, and pyrite affects the permeability of the samples in different ways. After pure CO2 and CO2+100 ppm H2S injection, permeability of the reservoir samples increased by 10–30% and ≤3%, respectively. In caprock samples, permeability increased by a factor of 3–10 and 1.3, respectively. However, after addition of 5,000 ppm H2S, the permeability of all samples decreased significantly. In the case of CO2+100 ppm H2S, halite, anhydrite, and pyrite precipitation did balance mineral dissolution, causing minimal variation in the permeability of samples.

scholarly journals Numerical Simulation and Optimization of CO2 Sequestration in Saline Aquifers

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zheming Zhang ◽  
Ramesh Agarwal
Keyword(s):  
Numerical Simulation ◽  
Co2 Sequestration ◽  
Storage Capacity ◽  
Co2 Storage ◽  
Injection Well ◽  
Co2 Injection ◽  
Great Promise ◽  
Saline Aquifer ◽  
Simulation And Optimization ◽  
Co2 Plume

With recent concerns on CO2 emissions from coal fired electricity generation plants; there has been major emphasis on the development of safe and economical Carbon Dioxide Capture and Sequestration (CCS) technology worldwide. Saline reservoirs are attractive geological sites for CO2 sequestration because of their huge capacity for sequestration. Over the last decade, numerical simulation codes have been developed in U.S, Europe and Japan to determine a priori the CO2 storage capacity of a saline aquifer and provide risk assessment with reasonable confidence before the actual deployment of CO2 sequestration can proceed with enormous investment. In U.S, TOUGH2 numerical simulator has been widely used for this purpose. However at present it does not have the capability to determine optimal parameters such as injection rate, injection pressure, injection depth for vertical and horizontal wells etc. for optimization of the CO2 storage capacity and for minimizing the leakage potential by confining the plume migration. This paper describes the development of a “Genetic Algorithm (GA)” based optimizer for TOUGH2 that can be used by the industry with good confidence to optimize the CO2 storage capacity in a saline aquifer of interest. This new code including the TOUGH2 and the GA optimizer is designated as “GATOUGH2”. It has been validated by conducting simulations of three widely used benchmark problems by the CCS researchers worldwide: (a) Study of CO2 plume evolution and leakage through an abandoned well, (b) Study of enhanced CH4 recovery in combination with CO2 storage in depleted gas reservoirs, and (c) Study of CO2 injection into a heterogeneous geological formation. Our results of these simulations are in excellent agreement with those of other researchers obtained with different codes. The validated code has been employed to optimize the proposed water-alternating-gas (WAG) injection scheme for (a) a vertical CO2 injection well and (b) a horizontal CO2 injection well, for optimizing the CO2 sequestration capacity of an aquifer. These optimized calculations are compared with the brute force nearly optimized results obtained by performing a large number of calculations. These comparisons demonstrate the significant efficiency and accuracy of GATOUGH2 as an optimizer for TOUGH2. This capability holds a great promise in studying a host of other problems in CO2 sequestration such as how to optimally accelerate the capillary trapping, accelerate the dissolution of CO2 in water or brine, and immobilize the CO2 plume.

scholarly journals Managing Uncertainty in Geological CO2 Storage Using Bayesian Evidential Learning

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (6) ◽  
pp. 1557
Author(s):  
Amine Tadjer ◽  
Reidar B. Bratvold
Keyword(s):  
Uncertainty Quantification ◽  
History Matching ◽  
Co2 Storage ◽  
Carbon Capture And Storage ◽  
Monitoring Program ◽  
Co2 Injection ◽  
Drinking Water Contamination ◽  
Model Inversion ◽  
Geological Co2 Storage ◽  
And Storage

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has been increasingly looking like a promising strategy to reduce CO2 emissions and meet the Paris agreement’s climate target. To ensure that CCS is safe and successful, an efficient monitoring program that will prevent storage reservoir leakage and drinking water contamination in groundwater aquifers must be implemented. However, geologic CO2 sequestration (GCS) sites are not completely certain about the geological properties, which makes it difficult to predict the behavior of the injected gases, CO2 brine leakage rates through wellbores, and CO2 plume migration. Significant effort is required to observe how CO2 behaves in reservoirs. A key question is: Will the CO2 injection and storage behave as expected, and can we anticipate leakages? History matching of reservoir models can mitigate uncertainty towards a predictive strategy. It could prove challenging to develop a set of history matching models that preserve geological realism. A new Bayesian evidential learning (BEL) protocol for uncertainty quantification was released through literature, as an alternative to the model-space inversion in the history-matching approach. Consequently, an ensemble of previous geological models was developed using a prior distribution’s Monte Carlo simulation, followed by direct forecasting (DF) for joint uncertainty quantification. The goal of this work is to use prior models to identify a statistical relationship between data prediction, ensemble models, and data variables, without any explicit model inversion. The paper also introduces a new DF implementation using an ensemble smoother and shows that the new implementation can make the computation more robust than the standard method. The Utsira saline aquifer west of Norway is used to exemplify BEL’s ability to predict the CO2 mass and leakages and improve decision support regarding CO2 storage projects.

Estimation of CO2 Diffusivity in Brine by Use of the Genetic Algorithm and Mixed Kernels-Based Support Vector Machine Model

2018 ◽  
Vol 141 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Qihong Feng ◽  
Ronghao Cui ◽  
Sen Wang ◽  
Jin Zhang ◽  
Zhe Jiang
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Algorithm ◽  
Support Vector Machine ◽  
Diffusion Coefficient ◽  
Co2 Storage ◽  
Co2 Injection ◽  
Support Vector ◽  
Hybrid Technique ◽  
Machine Model ◽  
Proposed Model ◽  
Wide Range

Diffusion coefficient of carbon dioxide (CO2), a significant parameter describing the mass transfer process, exerts a profound influence on the safety of CO2 storage in depleted reservoirs, saline aquifers, and marine ecosystems. However, experimental determination of diffusion coefficient in CO2-brine system is time-consuming and complex because the procedure requires sophisticated laboratory equipment and reasonable interpretation methods. To facilitate the acquisition of more accurate values, an intelligent model, termed MKSVM-GA, is developed using a hybrid technique of support vector machine (SVM), mixed kernels (MK), and genetic algorithm (GA). Confirmed by the statistical evaluation indicators, our proposed model exhibits excellent performance with high accuracy and strong robustness in a wide range of temperatures (273–473.15 K), pressures (0.1–49.3 MPa), and viscosities (0.139–1.950 mPa·s). Our results show that the proposed model is more applicable than the artificial neural network (ANN) model at this sample size, which is superior to four commonly used traditional empirical correlations. The technique presented in this study can provide a fast and precise prediction of CO2 diffusivity in brine at reservoir conditions for the engineering design and the technical risk assessment during the process of CO2 injection.

scholarly journals CO2 Injection Deformation Monitoring Based on UAV and InSAR Technology: A Case Study of Shizhuang Town, Shanxi Province, China

2022 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 237
Author(s):  
Tian Zhang ◽  
Wanchang Zhang ◽  
Ruizhao Yang ◽  
Dan Cao ◽  
Longfei Chen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Capture ◽  
Surface Deformation ◽  
Deformation Monitoring ◽  
Shanxi Province ◽  
Co2 Injection ◽  
Climate Mitigation ◽  
Measurement Technology ◽  
Surface Model ◽  
Integrated Monitoring ◽  
Migration Pathway

Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage, also referred to as Carbon Capture, Utilization and Sequestration (CCUS), is one of the novel climate mitigation technologies by which CO2 emissions are captured from sources, such as fossil power generation and industrial processes, and further either reused or stored with more attention being paid on the utilization of captured CO2. In the whole CCUS process, the dominant migration pathway of CO2 after being injected underground becomes very important information to judge the possible storage status as well as one of the essential references for evaluating possible environmental affects. Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) technology, with its advantages of extensive coverage in surface deformation monitoring and all-weather traceability of the injection processes, has become one of the promising technologies frequently adopted in worldwide CCUS projects. In this study, taking the CCUS sequestration area in Shizhuang Town, Shanxi Province, China, as an example, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) photography measurement technology with a 3D surface model at a resolution of 5.3 cm was applied to extract the high-resolution digital elevation model (DEM) of the study site in coordination with InSAR technology to more clearly display the results of surface deformation monitoring of the CO2 injection area. A 2 km surface heaving dynamic processes before and after injection from June 2020 to July 2021 was obtained, and a CO2 migration pathway northeastward was observed, which was rather consistent with the monitoring results by logging and micro-seismic studies. Additionally, an integrated monitoring scheme, which will be the trend of monitoring in the future, is proposed in the discussion.

scholarly journals Seasonal Groundwater Quality Status and Nitrogen Contamination in the Shallow Aquifer System of the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal

Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 2184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shakya ◽  
Nakamura ◽  
Kamei ◽  
Shrestha ◽  
Nishida
Keyword(s):  
Groundwater Quality ◽  
Nitrogen Compound ◽  
Shallow Aquifer ◽  
Kathmandu Valley ◽  
Nitrogen Compounds ◽  
Wet Season ◽  
Aquifer System ◽  
Spatially Distributed ◽  
Nitrogen Contamination ◽  
Dug Well

: The increasing concentration of nitrogen compounds in the groundwater is of a growing concern in terms of human health and groundwater quality. Although an excess of nitrogen compounds in the groundwater of the Kathmandu Valley has been reported, the seasonal variations of the fate of the nitrogen compounds and their relationships to the subsurface sediments are unknown. In this study, spatially distributed shallow dug well samples were collected during both the dry and wet seasons of 2016, and the nitrogen compound, chloride (Cl−), and iron (Fe2+) concentrations were analyzed. Two shallow dug wells and one deep tube well were monitored monthly for 2 years. Although NH4-N concentrations were similar in the clay-dominated areas during both seasons (1 and 0.9 mg-N/L), they were lower in the gravel-dominated areas during wet season (1.8 > 0.6 mg-N/L). The NO3-N concentration differed depending upon the soil type which increased during the wet season (clay 4.9 < 13.6 mg-N/L and gravel 2.5 < 6.8 mg-N/L). The Fe2+ concentration, however, was low during the wet season (clay 2.7 > 0.4 mg/L and gravel 2.8 > 0.3 mg/L). Long-term analysis showed higher fluctuation of nitrogen compounds in the gravel-bearing areas than in the clay-bearing areas.

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