Predicting the fate of a migrating fluid using spill-point analysis, with application to CO2 storage modelling

Abstract

To reduce the amount of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) that is released to the atmosphere, CO2 can be captured from its point source and injected into subsurface saline aquifers for long-term storage. This concept is known as Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), and has been put into practice for more than 20 years in Norway. An important question to answer before starting a storage project is how much CO2 may be adequately trapped in a saline aquifer. To estimate this storage capacity, one must consider the flow dynamics involved during injection and post-injection, and simulation software plays an important role in this regard. During the injection period, CO2 is primarily driven by pressure gradients, however after injection has stopped, CO2 is primarily driven by gravity forces and its migration is strongly influenced by the shape of the aquifer’s top-surface. As such, spill-point analysis can be used to help predict the long-term migration of CO2 within the aquifer. This reduces the need to perform computationally intensive simulations for thousands of years, yet still captures the amount of CO2 destined to remain within the aquifer.

Biography

Rebecca Allen is a Post Doctorate Fellow at the Computational Geosciences group of the Mathematics and Cybernetics department of SINTEF Digital. She obtained her BEng in Civil Engineering from McMaster University in Canada in 2009. Between 2009 and 2015, she completed her MSc in Environmental Science and Engineering and her PhD in Earth Science and Engineering from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia. She is a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), the International Society for Porous Media (InterPore) and the IEAGHG modelling network. In 2013, she was co-awarded as an outstanding student at IEAGHG’s International Summer School on Carbon Capture and Storage, and was invited to be a student mentor at the following year’s summer school.

Rebecca’s current research activities are related to modelling large-scale storage of CO2 in geological formations, in particular well optimization, model calibration, and capacity estimation. She has published work in Geofluids, Energy Procedia, SPE Journal, and Progress in Computational Fluid Dynamics. She has also presented work at various conferences including GHGT, InterPore, SPE Reservoir Simulation Symposium, and ECMOR.