Ardy Arsyad, Yasuhiro Mitani, Hiro Ikemi, and Shiro Oura
CO2 solubility, numerical simulation, low permeable rocks
As CO2 is injected to deep underground, it tends to flow upward due to its own buoyancy while flowing laterally driven by differential pressure. When CO2 flowing, it will also dissolve into brine that resides rock formations and this may affect its migration and generated pore pressure. In this paper, we developed numerical simulation to investigate the effect of CO2 dissolution in the saturated water on supercritical CO2 injection into low permeable rocks. The numerical simulation, based on the mathematical model of two phases flow in porous media with solubility effect considered using Henry’s Law, was employed to interpret the experimental results of supercritical CO2 injection to a cored Ainoura sandstone saturated with water using new developed flow pump permeability test. The saturation of supercritical CO2 in the sandstone was predicted, and subsequently compared to the CO2 saturation calculated using numerical analysis without solubility effect including the theoretical analysis of flow pump permeability test. It is observed that the saturation of supercritical CO2 in the cored sandstone is larger as the solubility effect considered. It is also found that the increase of CO2 dissolution in the saturated water will increase the pore pressure of the sandstone yielded by CO2 injection. These results suggested that the solubility of CO2 would become positive factor to drive more CO2 injected, whereas its effect on increasing pore pressure must be taken into account in designing better CO2 sequestration in low permeable rocks.
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