Transport of perfluorocarbon tracers in the Cranfield Geological Carbon Sequestration Project

Abstract

A field‐scale carbon dioxide (CO2) injection pilot project was conducted by the Southeast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (SECARB) at Cranfield, Mississippi. Two associated campaigns in 2009 and 2010 were carried out to co‐inject perfluorocarbon tracers (PFTs) and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) with CO2. Tracers in gas samples from two observation wells were analyzed to construct breakthrough curves. In this work, we present the field data and numerical modeling of the flow and transport of CO2, brine, and tracers. A high‐resolution static model of the formation geology in the detailed area study (DAS) was used to capture the impact of connected flow pathways created by fluvial channels on breakthrough curves and breakthrough times of PFTs and SF6 tracers. We use the cubic‐plus‐association (CPA) equation of state, which takes into account the polar nature of water molecules, to describe the phase behavior of CO2–brine‐tracer mixtures. Our simulated results show good agreement for the 2009 tracer campaign in Cranfield, while a larger discrepancy emerges by 2010. The combination of multiple tracer injection pulses with detailed numerical simulations proves to be a powerful tool in constraining both formation properties and how complex flow paths develop over time. © 2018 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Solutal convection in porous media: Comparison between boundary conditions of constant concentration and constant flux

“…where C f [Pa −1 ] is the mixture compressibility and νi [m 3 /mol] is the partial molar volume of each compo-nent in the mixture; both variables are computed from the CPA-EOS. We adopt the higher-order combination of Mixed Hybrid Finite Element and Discontinuous Galerkin methods that were presented in earlier works [25,[43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51] for high-resolution simulations of flow and transport in porous media; more details on the numerical methods and solvers are provided in [52].…”

Advances in Carbon Dioxide Storage Projects: Assessment and Perspectives

“…The captured CO 2 is used to inject into the Cranfield oil field, in southwest Mississippi, USA, for EOR. In addition, the Cranfield oil field is characterized by a complex pressure with a heterogeneous fluvial sandstone channel and an effective aquifer drive, which is difficult to anticipate with regard to the presence of gas in the formation. , Because of this complexity, the monitoring plan was conducted, especially 4D seismic, and the result revealed that there was a mixed success in the formation. ,, Furthermore, they applied a probabilistic technique to the location to develop monitoring tools and sampling frequencies inside and above of the reservoir formation for geophysical and geochemical monitoring assurance …”

Diffusion coefficients of CO2–SO2–water and CO2–N2–water systems and their impact on the CO2 sequestration process: Molecular dynamics and dissolution process simulations

“…1,2 There are extensive body of published works about the experimental and numerical aspects of this process. [3][4][5][6][7][8][9] However, high costs of CO 2 sequestration projects are a barrier in this topic. Based on this fact that large amount of costs is invested to purify CO 2 from the flue gas stream of the emission sources, some researchers introduced impure CO 2 sequestration as a way to tackle the economic issues.…”