Leakage dynamics of fault zones: experimental and analytical study with application to CO₂ storage

Journal article

To simulate CO$_{2,g}$-water flow in tank experiments, subject to viscous, gravitational and capillary forces as well as the dissolution of this gas (CO$_{2,aq}$), we constructed a simple pseudo black-oil model. Simple PVT correlations were used for gas density, viscosity, and solubility as based on experimental studies and equations of state from the literature. These solubility calculations assume instantaneous chemical equilibrium. The applicability of the approach is investigated by modeling the FluidFlower tank experiment (Nordbotten et al., 2022). The simulation captures the expected physical phenomena, including capillary filtration, gravitational segregation, and dissolution fingering. An error in the total mass, due to ignoring solubility variations with pressure remains acceptable as long as the pressure variation in the tank is small.Comment: Submitted to Transport in Porous Medi

Authors: Gilmore, KA; Sahu, CK; Benham, GP; Neufeld, JA; Bickle, MJ

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Journal: Journal of Fluid Mechanics
• Volume: 931
• Pages: a31
• Article number: A31
• Publication date: 2021-11-29
• DOI: 10.1017/jfm.2021.970
• EISSN: 1469-7645
• ISSN: 0022-1120
• Language: English
• Keywords: Environmental science; Fault (geology); Petroleum engineering; Geotechnical engineering; Petrology; Geology; Seismology; Groundwater; Leakage (economics); Aquifer; Chemistry; Soil science; Relative permeability; Porous medium; Permeability (electromagnetism); Plume; Thermodynamics; Porosity; Mechanics