Impact of hydrogen solubility on depleted gas field’s caprock: an application for underground hydrogen storage
Mohammad Bahar A B and Reza Rezaee AA Curtin University, Department of Petroleum Engineering, Kensington, Australia.
B Corresponding author. Email: Mohamamd.Bahar@gmail.com
The APPEA Journal 61(2) 366-370 https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ20161
Accepted: 2 April 2021 Published: 2 July 2021
Abstract
Depleted gas fields are considered a low-risk location for underground hydrogen storage purposes to balance seasonal fluctuations in hydrogen supply and demand. The objective of this study was to identify any significant risk of hydrogen leakages stored in depleted gas fields. The capability of the storage area in terms of sealing efficiency varies with parameters such as rate of diffusion, solubility, thickness and capillary threshold pressure of the caprock. The most common caprock are shales, which contain organic material. The solubility of hydrogen into organic material could change the petrophysical properties of the rock, such as porosity and permeability. Any changes in these petrophysical characteristics can reduce the capillary threshold pressure thus reducing the caprock efficiency for the safe storage of hydrogen. There is about 20% of the remaining gas volume in the depleted gas field, which helps to prevent brine from entering the production streamlines and maintain reservoir pressure. The characteristic data of hydrogen at different high pressures and temperatures have been evaluated and imported into the simple finite element model using the Python programming language. Most of the parameters that influence reducing the strength of the caprock are identified. Crucial parameters are the rate of diffusion, the solubility of hydrogen in kerogen, geomechanical deformation, threshold capillary pressure, long period of injection and withdrawing of hydrogen. The model shows that the native gas production with hydrogen is low due to significant density variation and mobility ratio between methane and hydrogen. Finally, a wide range of parameters and reservoir conditions has been considered for minimising the potential risks of possible leakages.
Keywords: hydrogen storage, fluid flow, North Perth Basin, hydrogen diffusion, cap-rock, hydrogen site selection characteristics, depleted gas field, seal leakages.
Dr Mohammad Bahar has more than 29 years of experience in oil and gas industry and is the author of over 28 peer-reviewed scientific publications and conference papers. He has achieved in professional skill level in fluid phase behaviour, enhanced oil recovery, reservoir simulation and field development plan. He started his professional job with National Iranian Oil Company from 1990 to 2003. After completion of his PhD at Curtin University, he joined to CSIRO as a research scientist in 2006 where he was working on microbial enhanced oil recovery project. In 2010, he joined to DMIRS, worked as a senior reservoir engineer on unconventional resources, CO2 storage and reservoir management projects and is working now on production and injection data management at DMIRS. |
Professor Reza Rezaee of Curtin’s Department of Petroleum Engineering has a PhD degree in Reservoir Characterization. His research has been mostly on integrated solutions for reservoir characterisation, formation evaluation and petrophysics. He has also worked on the application of artificial intelligence in the oil and gas industry for many years. Currently, he is focused on unconventional gas including shale gas and tight gas sand studies. He has over 27 years of experience in academia being responsible for both teaching and research. During his research career, he has led several major research projects funded by various oil and gas companies such as WAPET, WMC, MESA, Santos, NIOC, PEDEC, DMP, Buru, Woodside, Carnarvon, Norwest, Devon Energy, SWU/SKL and ANLEC. He has received a total of more than $2.4 M funds through his collaborative research projects. He has supervised over 70 MSc and PhD students during his university career to date. He has published more than 170 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers and is the author of five books on petroleum geology, logging and log interpretation and gas shale reservoirs. As a founder of the ‘Unconventional Gas Research Group’ of Australia, he has established a unique and highly sophisticated research lab at the Department of Petroleum Engineering, Curtin University to research petrophysical evaluation of tight gas sands and shale gas formations. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Improved Oil and Gas Recovery journal, Associate Editor of Marine and Petroleum Geology and Associate Editor of Geofluids. |
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