oa X-ray Microscopy Imaging Of Reactive Transport And Drying Of Salt Solutions In Fractured Porous Media From Core- To Pore- Scale

ABSTRACT Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has been recognised as the best possible means for effective management of CO2 generated from industrial activities. The study of porosity and permeability has been given prime importance since it governs the storage or in other words prevents leakage of CO2 into the other formations and back into atmosphere. It has been depicted that such interaction of injecting CO2 leads to salt precipitation, which in turn affect the porosity and permeability of the rock. Hence, it becomes essential to investigate the interactions amongst the rock-brine (water) present in the reservoir and CO2. The location of the salt precipitants depends on the competition of advective and capillary forces on the aqueous fluid phase transporting brine to the drying front [1, 2]. In our study, we consider drying process of reservoir brine that takes place in fractured porous media. Initially, CO2 starts to dry the matrix-fracture interface. The deposition of salt at the exposed fracture face driven by capillary flow of the liquid phase in the porous matrix could cause a seal to develop and reduce the storage capacity of an aquifer which in certain circumstances could lead to a reduction in the fracture permeability. Dry out experiments of different solutions are carried out on cores with one face exposed to represent a fractured system. The morphology and the exact location of the precipitate at the fracture-matrix interface on the pore scale require imaging. These images are used in numerical to calculate the permeability reduction in our samples due to salt precipitation and compare the predictions to experimental measurements on the salt deposits [3]. REFERENCES 1.Peysson, Y., Bazin, B., Magnier, C., Kohler, E., and Youssef, S., “Permeability alteration due to salt precipitation driven by drying in the context of CO2 injection” Energy Procedia, (2011), 4: 4387-4394. 2.Ott, H., de Kloe, K., Marcelis, F., and Makurat, A., “Injection of supercritical CO2 in brine saturated sandstone: Pattern formation during salt precipitation” Energy Procedia, (2011), Volume 4, Pages 4425-4432 3.Yang, J., Boek, E.S., “A comparison study of multi-component Lattice Boltzmann models for flow in porous media applications”, Computers & Mathematics with Applications, Volume 65, Issue 6, March 2013, Pages 882-890, ISSN 0898-1221