Experimental and numerical studies of density driven natural convection in saturated porous media with application to CO2 geological storage

Titly Farhana Faisal, Sylvie Chevalier, Mohamed Sassi

Research output: Contribution to journalConference articlepeer-review

36 Scopus citations

Abstract

One of the fundamental physical phenomena related to CO2 injection in subsurface brine-saturated formations is the dissolution-diffusion- convection process of CO2. The injected supercritical CO2 being less dense than brine settles beneath the formation seal. The overlying CO2-saturated brine is slightly heavier than brine itself thus a densitydriven convective flow occurs which will enhance the dissolution rate of CO2, reduce time for solutal trapping and increase storage security. In this work experiments and simulations at the laboratory scale were performed to help inform studies at the reservoir scale. Experiments were conducted in transparent Hele-Shaw cells and the captured visual results of the convection phenomenon were used to validate the numerical simulations performed using STOMP simulator. Experiments are repeated with variations in permeability to vary the characteristic Rayleigh number. Corresponding two-phase simulations are compared with their equivalent time shots obtained from experimental imaging. The experimental and numerical results show fairly good agreement in terms of fingering characteristics (length, thickness, frequency) and global time scale.

Original languageBritish English
Pages (from-to)5323-5330
Number of pages8
JournalEnergy Procedia
Volume37
DOIs
StatePublished - 2013
Event11th International Conference on Greenhouse Gas Control Technologies, GHGT 2012 - Kyoto, Japan
Duration: 18 Nov 201222 Nov 2012

Keywords

  • Carbon sequestration
  • Density-driven convection
  • Hele-shaw cell
  • STOMP-WCS

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