Rapid modelling of flow, trapping, and dissolution in geological carbon sequestration

Geological carbon sequestration represents a crucial step in reaching Net Zero targets by storing CO₂ in porous geological formations rather than releasing it into the atmosphere. When designing and operating storage sites, it is important to understand how the CO₂ will flow - and for how long - before it is ultimately confined by mechanisms such as residual trapping and dissolution. However, predicting this behaviour is complicated by the fact that only limited measurements of the storage reservoir are available, while the CO₂ is strongly influenced by geological heterogeneities in properties such as porosity and permeability.

 

In this talk, I will present a vertically integrated model of the reservoir that allow us to simulate the flow in a fraction of the time of the standard industry approach, while retaining the key physical mechanisms involved. This allows us to investigate a much larger number of realisations, and so evaluate more extensively the impact of different reservoir heterogeneities and injection strategies. I will demonstrate this model with a study of the trapping effect of sub-seismic-resolution undulations in topography, as well as apply it to real-world reservoir datasets such as for Sleipner.