Impact of injected water salinity on CO2 storage efficiency in homogenous reservoirs
Emad A. Al-Khdheeawi A B D , Stephanie Vialle C , Ahmed Barifcani A , Mohammad Sarmadivaleh A and Stefan Iglauer AA Department of Petroleum Engineering, Curtin University, Kensington 6151, Western Australia.
B Petroleum Technology Department, University of Technology, Baghdad, Iraq.
C Department of Exploration Geophysics, Curtin University, Kensington 6151, Western Australia.
D Corresponding author. Emails: e.al-khdheeawi@postgrad.curtin.edu.au; emad.reading@gmail.com
The APPEA Journal 58(1) 44-50 https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ17041
Submitted: 30 November 2017 Accepted: 13 February 2018 Published: 28 May 2018
Abstract
Water alternating gas (WAG) injection significantly improves enhanced oil recovery efficiency by improving the sweep efficiency. However, the impact of injected water salinity during WAG injection on CO2 storage efficiency has not been previously demonstrated. Thus, a 3D reservoir model has been developed for simulating CO2 injection and storage processes in homogeneous reservoirs with different water injection scenarios (i.e. low salinity water injection (1000 ppm NaCl), high salinity water injection (250 000 ppm NaCl) and no water injection), and the associated reservoir-scale CO2 plume dynamics and CO2 dissolution have been predicted. Furthermore, in this work, we have investigated the efficiency of dissolution trapping with and without WAG injection. For all water injection scenarios, 5000 kton of CO2 were injected during a 10-year CO2 injection period. For high and low salinity water injection scenarios, 5 cycles of CO2 injection (each cycle is one year) at a rate of 1000 kton/year were carried out, and each CO2 cycle was followed by a one year water injection at a rate of 0.015 pore volume per year. This injection period was followed by a 500-year post injection (storage) period. Our results clearly indicate that injected water salinity has a significant impact on the quantity of dissolved CO2 and on the CO2 plume dynamics. The low salinity water injection resulted in the maximum CO2 dissolution and minimum vertical migration of CO2. Also, our results show that WAG injection enhances dissolution trapping and reduces CO2 leakage risk for both injected water salinities. Thus, we conclude that the low salinity water injection improves CO2 storage efficiency.
Keywords: CO2 plume dynamics, CO2 storage, dissolution trapping, low salinity injection, water injection.
Emad Al-Khdheeawi is a PhD candidate at Department of Petroleum Engineering, Curtin University, Western Australia. Emad’s research interests are in wettability, CO2 geo-storage, reservoir simulation, rock and fluid properties, enhanced oil recovery and multi-phase flow through porous media. |
Stephanie Vialle is a lecturer at the Western Australia School of Mines, Curtin University. She has a M.S. in Fundamental and Applied Geochemistry and a PhD in Rock Physics, both from IPG Paris and University Paris Diderot. Her interests lie in rock properties upscaling, seismic signatures of geological processes and improved 4D seismic monitoring for CO2 storage. |
Ahmed Barifcani is an Associate Professor in the Department of Petroleum Engineering at Curtin University, WA, since 2006. He has BSc, MSc and PhD degrees in chemical engineering from University of Birmingham, UK. He is a Fellow and a Chartered Scientist of the Institution of Chemical Engineers (FIChemE and CSci). He has many publications on flow assurance, liquefied natural gas enhanced oil recovery and CO2 capture and storage. He has over 30 years of industrial experience in operation design, engineering, construction, project management and research and development in the fields of oil refining, gas processing, petrochemicals, flow assurance and CO2 capture. |
Mohammad Sarmadivaleh is a Lecturer at the Department of Petroleum Engineering at Curtin University, WA, and he leads the Petroleum Geo-mechanics group. Mohammad received his PhD from Curtin University in numerical and experimental studies on hydraulic fracturing in 2012. Mohammad’s research interests include hydraulic fracturing, sanding, geo-mechanical reservoir modelling and CO2 sequestration studies. He currently supervises 13 higher degree by research students and participates in academic and industrial research projects. |
Stefan Iglauer is an Associate Professor at Curtin University, Perth, Australia, in the Department of Petroleum Engineering. His research interests are in CO2 geo-storage, wettability and multi-phase flow through porous rock with a particular focus on atomic to pore-scale processes. Stefan has authored more than 130 technical publications; he holds a PhD degree in material science from Oxford Brookes University,UK, and a MSc degree in chemistry from the University of Paderborn, Germany. |
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