Impact of Mineral Reactive Surface Area on Forecasting Geological Carbon Sequestration in a CO₂-EOR Field

• Main Authors: Wei Jia, Ting Xiao, Zhidi Wu, Zhenxue Dai, Brian McPherson
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-03-01
• Series: Energies
• Subjects: geological carbon sequestration; reactive surface area; mineral trapping; enhanced oil recovery with CO₂(CO₂-EOR); geochemical reactions; risk assessment
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/6/1608

Mineral reactive surface area (RSA) is one of the key factors that control mineral reactions, as it describes how much mineral is accessible and can participate in reactions. This work aims to evaluate the impact of mineral RSA on numerical simulations for CO₂ storage at depleted oil fields. The Farnsworth Unit (FWU) in northern Texas was chosen as a case study. A simplified model was used to screen representative cases from 87 RSA combinations to reduce the computational cost. Three selected cases with low, mid, and high RSA values were used for the FWU model. Results suggest that the impact of RSA values on CO₂ mineral trapping is more complex than it is on individual reactions. While the low RSA case predicted negligible porosity change and an insignificant amount of CO₂ mineral trapping for the FWU model, the mid and high RSA cases forecasted up to 1.19% and 5.04% of porosity reduction due to mineral reactions, and 2.46% and 9.44% of total CO₂ trapped in minerals by the end of the 600-year simulation, respectively. The presence of hydrocarbons affects geochemical reactions and can lead to net CO₂ mineral trapping, whereas mineral dissolution is forecasted when hydrocarbons are removed from the system.