DOE-Funded Projects to Monitor, Evaluate Geologic CO2 Storage

August 27, 2009 // Published as a news service by IHS

CO2 capture and storage in deep geologic formations is considered one of the most economical ways to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants.

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The projects selected by the DOE are intended to develop technologies and protocols to:

• Monitor the movement of CO2 into, through and out of the targeted geologic storage area.
• Verify the location of CO2 placed in geologic storage.
• Account for the entire quantity of CO2 transported to geologic storage sites.
• Mathematically simulate the placement, storage, movement and release of CO2 into, through and from geologic formations.
• Assess the risks associated with the placement of the CO2 in geologic formations and the potential release of CO2 from these formations after storage.

Monitoring, Verification and Accounting
Projects in this area will investigate technologies to track:

• The amount of CO2 stored at a geologic sequestration site.
• Site monitoring for potential leaks or other deterioration of storage integrity over time.
• Verification that the CO2 is sustaining expected levels of permanence.

Successful technologies, said DOE, will significantly increase the confidence that CO2 placed in geologic formations is being accurately tracked and remains permanently stored, thus protecting human health and the environment. Projects in this category are described below.

• Researchers at Columbia University will develop systems for tagging CO2 with carbon-14 at atmospheric level (1 part per trillion) and measuring the carbon-14 CO2 levels. This tagging will better quantify CO2 monitoring and make it possible to accurately inventory geologically stored carbon, said the DOE. The systems will be tested in the laboratory and at the CarbFix sequestration project in Iceland, where CO2 will be injected into a permeable basalt formation at 600 meters in depth.
• Fusion Petroleum Technologies intends to develop seismic data software to complement existing software. The project team will determine whether fewer points in a surface seismic array, collected more frequently (together with new and existing software), will allow them to develop a more accurate CO2 reservoir modeling package.
• A differential absorption light detection and ranging (LIDAR) instrument will be built by Montana State University to scan across a field test area to determine possible CO2 leakage to the atmosphere. The project team will assemble and test the instrument in the laboratory, then validate its operation and reliability at a Center for Zero Emissions Research and Technology site and at the future Big Sky Carbon Sequestration Partnership's large-scale CO2 storage test site, according to the DOE.
• Planetary Emissions Management Inc. is commercializing a carbon-14 field-ready analyzer with a sensitivity of approximately 1 part per million of fossil fuel–produced CO2 in ambient air. The analyzer will be deployed at sites where CO2 leaks from natural geologic reservoirs and at a pilot CO2 injection site for testing and validation. Ideally, this will be followed by long-term deployment at large-scale operating CO2 storage projects, said the DOE.
• Schlumberger Carbon Services investigators will develop methods for risk quantification that can be directly applied to individual wells using borehole logging tools and measurements. Methods to quantify the probability of leakage will be developed for specific zones in the well, e.g., the casing, cement, cement-casing interface, cement-formation interface and any existing defects.
• Stanford University will provide methodologies for using seismic data for quantitative mapping of the movement, presence and permanence of CO2 relative to its intended storage location. Optimized rock-fluid models will incorporate the seismic signatures of:
  
  
  1. Saturation scales and free versus dissolved gas in a CO2-water mixture.
  2. Pore pressure changes.
  3. CO2-induced chemical changes to the host rock.
• University of Miami Rosenstiel School researchers will use high-precision space geodesy to relate subtle displacements of the earth's surface to pressure and volume changes at depth due to storage of CO2. Geochemical modeling will separate the effects of formation of CO2 reaction products from potential CO2 leakage or loss from the reservoir. Leakage, if any, will be detected using sensors to measure CO2 concentrations and mass spectrometers to measure isotopic ratios.
• University of Texas at Austin and Bureau of Economic Geology investigators will use new technology to acquire three-dimensional, multi-component seismic data across brine-filled strata that can be used for CO2 storage. The data will be processed and interpreted using rock physics principles to show that the combination of compressional and shear seismic attributes provides more rock, fluid and geologic information to use in monitoring, verification and accounting tasks than does the use of compressional seismic data alone, said the DOE.
• The University of Wyoming will combine multiphase flow simulations with multi-component seismic waveform modeling and inversion to determine if seismic waveform inversion can accurately predict CO2 plume movements within storage reservoirs in post-injection scenarios involving rewetting and trapping of CO2 by bypassing and snap-off mechanisms.
• High-sensitivity permanent downhole gauges will be placed by the West Virginia University Research Corp. in a formation where CO2 is being stored. The complex and highly convoluted real-time data transmitted by multiple gauges will be processed and modeled using state-of-the-art artificial intelligence and data-mining technology to identify the location and amount of CO2 leakage.

Simulation
Projects in this topic area will develop advanced numerical models that simulate the behavior of geologically stored CO2. The development of refined and coupled geochemical, mechanical and flow models will yield better predictions of subsurface CO2 behavior, thereby assisting the design and implementation of CO2 geologic storage projects, said the DOE.

• Advanced Resources International researchers will develop and test three advanced geochemical and geomechanical modules to increase accuracy of simulating CO2 behavior in coals and shales. They will couple these with flow simulation. Coal storage factors such as coal failure and permeability enhancement, matrix swelling and shrinking, and competition of water as adsorbed phase on coals will be addressed.
• Battelle Memorial Institute investigators will develop a simulation framework for geologic CO2 storage along the U.S. Arches geologic province (Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan and Ohio) by building a geologic model and completing reservoir simulations necessary for large-scale CO2 storage.
• Colorado School of Mines researchers will develop a comprehensive reservoir simulator for modeling non-isothermal multiphase flow and transport of CO2 in saline reservoirs with heterogeneity, anisotropy and fractures and faults, coupled with geochemical and geomechanical processes that would occur during CO2 geologic sequestration.
• This Missouri University of Science and Technology project will couple a reservoir model and geomechanical model to simulate potential cap rock leakage for the CO2 capture and storage demonstration site at City Utilities of Springfield, Mo. Materials and methods for stopping potential leakage through the cap rock will be examined. The approach is designed to be applicable to other CO2 injection sites, said the DOE.
• A basin-scale hybrid analytical-numerical multi-layer model of CO2 storage will be developed by New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology explicitly representing freshwater, brine and CO2 phases using sharp-interface theory. The model will simulate an injection of 100 million metric tonnes of CO2 annually at dozens of power plant locations across Indiana and Illinois.

Risk Assessment
Projects in this topic area will develop models and protocols to assess the programmatic and technical risks associated with storing CO2 in a geologic formation. The models and protocols will enable scientists, engineers and storage-project administrators to develop approaches to minimize those risks, said the DOE.

• According to the DOE, an integrated system-level risk analysis approach for geologic CO2 storage will be achieved by GoldSim Technology Group by adapting and extending an existing probabilistic simulation framework (GoldSim) originally developed for long-term safety analyses of nuclear waste disposal.
• Headwaters Clean Carbon Services researchers will develop a process-based risk assessment model to determine quantitatively the potential risks and impacts of CO2 storage, as well as the cost savings for risk mitigation. The model will be applied to the SACROC field site in Texas and two other known CO2 geologic storage sites.
• Princeton University investigators will develop a framework for examining carbon capture and storage investment decisions in light of uncertainty in CO2 leakage risks, potential subsurface liability, and the associated losses in carbon credits.
• University of Texas at Austin and the Bureau of Economic Geology will quantify the risks associated with CO2 storage in brine reservoirs by:
  
  
  1. Employing Bayesian inference techniques.
  2. Learning from the safety record of the CO2-EOR industry.
  3. Using expert panels drawn from industry and non-governmental organizations to evaluate programmatic risks.
  4. Examining the risks produced by CO2 dissolution and pressure fields associated with injection into brine reservoirs.
  5. Assessing the consequences of potential CO2 leakage on water ecology and energy resources.

The projects will be managed by the DOE's National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL).

Funding details per project may be found on the NETL web site.

Source: National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL).