Geological Storage of CO₂, Mathematical Modeling and Risk Assessment (MatMoRA-II)

Executive summary:
The primary goal of the project is to develop methods for modeling and simulating the pertinent flow dynamics of CO₂ in appropriate geological formations for CO₂ storage. The project has achieved substantial progress towards this goal, focusing on the five subareas: (i) thermal and mechanical effects, (ii) CO₂ dissolution, (iii) caprock topography, (iv) optimized injection strategies, and (v) coupled flow-geomechanical models. The key results involve fully developed modeling capabilities at both the large and small scales in the caprock and dissolution subareas, as well as preliminary work in thermal and mechanical modeling and optimization. The project has examined important issues related to the role of heterogeneity and physical complexity to enhance or hinder the ability of convection-driven dissolution and structural features of the caprock to trap and secure CO₂ over the long term. Additionally, continuous improvements to existing open-source software are part of ongoing work that will eventually lead to new, sophisticated optimization methods for engineering safe and cost-effective CO₂ storage projects. Also, a vertically integrated (VE) formulation for poroelasticity that couples with the VE assumption for two-phase flow in layered structures has been developed.

The key deliverables from the project thus far have been publications in high-level peer-reviewed journals. Additionally, new research codes have been developed and shared among the project partners. In particular, in collaboration with the spin-off project “Numerical CO₂ laboratory”, we have developed a CO₂-module in the open-source software MRST , which offers a comprehensive set of tools for modeling structural/stratigraphic, residual and solubility trapping. The module supports industry-standard input formats and offers a wide range of methods, ranging from simple structural analysis (spill-point and percolation type models), via vertical equilibrium methods, to fully implicit methods in 3D. In addition, the module offers a number of tutorial examples as well as simple access to public data sets used for benchmarking, including the Johansen field, Layer 9 from Sleipner, as well as regional data sets from the recent North Sea Storage Atlas.

So far, the MatMoRA II project has provided extensive knowledge and novel research results motivated by the injection of CO₂ in saline aquifers.