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CO2 migration in saline aquifers. Part 1. Capillary trapping under slope and groundwater flow

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2010

C. W. MACMINN ,
M. L. SZULCZEWSKI  and
R. JUANES
C. W. MACMINN
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
M. L. SZULCZEWSKI
Affiliation:
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
R. JUANES*
Affiliation:
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
*
†Email address for correspondence: juanes@mit.edu
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Abstract

Injection of carbon dioxide (CO2) into geological formations is widely regarded as a promising tool for reducing global atmospheric CO2 emissions. To evaluate injection scenarios, estimate reservoir capacity and assess leakage risks, an accurate understanding of the subsurface spreading and migration of the plume of mobile CO2 is essential. Here, we present a complete solution to a theoretical model for the subsurface migration of a plume of CO2 due to natural groundwater flow and aquifer slope, and subject to residual trapping. The results show that the interplay of these effects leads to non-trivial behaviour in terms of trapping efficiency. The analytical nature of the solution offers insight into the physics of CO2 migration, and allows for rapid, basin-specific capacity estimation. We use the solution to explore the parameter space via the storage efficiency, a macroscopic measure of plume migration. In a future study, we shall incorporate CO2 dissolution into the migration model and study the importance of dissolution relative to capillary trapping and the impact of dissolution on the storage efficiency.

JFM classification

Geophysical and Geological Flows: Gravity currents Low-Reynolds-number flows: Porous media
Type
Papers
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 662 , 10 November 2010 , pp. 329 - 351
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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