Ground surface monitoring for CO2 injection and storage
Saeed Salimzadeh A * , Dane Kasperczyk A , Zuorong Chen A , Abbas Movassagh A , Elaheh Arjomand A , Wen Shen (Vincent) Mow A and James Kear AA Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Clayton, Vic., Australia.
The APPEA Journal 62 S492-S496 https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ21105
Accepted: 28 February 2022 Published: 13 May 2022
© 2022 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of APPEA.
Abstract
Tracking the migration of injected CO2 is critical to understanding the performance of subsurface intervals selected for CO2 sequestration. Subsurface CO2 injection may cause a deformation at the surface of the earth. Measuring and analysing the shape and magnitude of this surface deformation provides confidence that sequestered CO2 will remain in the target formations and can alert operators to the existence of hidden faults or fractures which may necessitate redesign of the injection schedule or remediation of the geological hazards. Surface deformation information for onshore injection operations can be obtained via Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) satellite imagery or an array of high-precision tiltmeters installed in 10–15 m deep boreholes. However, in the case of offshore injection operations, InSAR data is not available. Due to the lack of tilt data at In Salah field at Krechba, Algeria, synthetic tilt data has been produced using a 3D forward model. The synthetic tilt time-series data at ten locations around each injection well has been used in inverse analysis. Results show that the shape and direction of the CO2 plume in the subsurface can be accurately determined through inverse analysis of the tilt time-series data.
Keywords: carbon dioxide storage, CCS, CO2 injection, ground surface monitoring, InSAR, inverse analysis, tiltmeters, underground storage.
Dr Saeed Salimzadeh obtained his PhD in Geomechanics at the University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney) in 2014. He has international research experience through working with the rock mechanics group of Professor Zimmerman at Imperial College London, and Danish Hydrocarbon Research and Technology Centre (DHRTC), Denmark. Currently, Saeed is a Senior Research Scientist at Hydraulic Fracturing team at CSIRO Energy, Clayton, Australia. Saeed is an expert in reservoir geomechanics and hydraulic fracturing. His work includes numerical modelling, code development, laboratory experiments, ground surface monitoring and inverse analysis. He has developed the hydraulic fracturing simulator module CSMP-HF. Saeed has supervised many master and PhD students. |
Dane Kasperczyk is a senior engineer working in the Energy Resources group at CSIRO, he holds degrees from the University of Melbourne in Civil Engineering and Science (Earth Sciences). For the past decade he has worked on research and projects related to fracture mechanics modelling, hydraulic fracturing environmental risk probabilities and preconditioning for block cave, sublevel cave, and underground mines. Through this he has developed capability in subsurface monitoring using tiltmeters that has seen applicable use for mining, CO2 sequestration and geomechanical energy storage. He is responsible for developing software solutions to translate complex research code into the hands of non-technical users such as Fractura, a CSIRO-developed hydraulic fracturing simulation desktop platform and online monitoring software-as-a-service. |
Zuorong Chen is a Research Scientist with CSIRO. His current research interests include hydraulic fracture monitoring and modelling, reservoir simulation, wellbore stability, geomechanics and finite element method. He holds a PhD degree in solid mechanics from Beihang University. Chen is a member of SPE. |
Abbas Movassagh is a Research Scientist with CSIRO at Energy Business Unit. His research focuses on environmental and uncertainty analysis including reservoir geomechanics, hydraulic fracturing experiments and modelling. Abbas acquired his PhD from the University of Adelaide and has more than 12 years’ experience in reservoir engineering and geomechanics. |
Elaheh Arjomand has started her post-doc fellowship with CSIRO in mid-2019 and her research is mainly focused on maintaining the integrity of the decommissioned oil and gas wells and exploring novel sealing materials and technologies for plugging and decommissioning. Elaheh was awarded her PhD on the integrity of the cement sheath within wells while subjected to pressure and temperature variations from the University of Adelaide in 2018. |
Wen Shen (Vincent) Mow completed his Bachelor of Engineering (Honours – Electrical and Computer Systems) and Bachelor of Biomedical Sciences at Monash University Clayton in 2018. He has been a part of CSIRO’s Hydraulic Fracturing Research Team since 2017, designing and producing the custom devices and electrical systems used in their research experiment and field trials. His experience includes developing PCBs and embedded software for sensors and wireless data systems. |
James Kear is a Civil and Environmental Engineer and Research Team Leader in the Energy Resources Research Program at CSIRO. He has research experience in the fields of environmental risk assessment, well integrity, hydraulic fracturing, rock mechanics, sustainable design and systems thinking. |
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