Evaluating the impact of aquifer layer properties on geomechanical response during CO2 geological sequestration

  • Authors:

  • Jie Bao;Zhijie Xu;Guang Lin;Yilin Fang

  • Affiliations:

  • Fluid and Computational Engineering Group, Energy and Environment Directorate, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA 99352, USA;Computational Mathematics Group, Fundamental and Computational Sciences Directorate, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA 99352, USA;Computational Mathematics Group, Fundamental and Computational Sciences Directorate, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA 99352, USA;Hydrology Technical Group, Energy and Environment Directorate, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA 99352, USA

  • Venue:
  • Computers & Geosciences
  • Year:
  • 2013

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Abstract

Numerical models play an essential role in understanding the facts of carbon dioxide (CO"2) geological sequestration in the life cycle of a storage reservoir. We present a series of test cases that reflect a broad and realistic range of aquifer reservoir properties to systematically evaluate and compare the impacts on the geomechanical response to CO"2 injection. In this study, a coupled hydro-mechanical model was applied to simulate the sequestration process, and a quasi-Monte Carlo sampling method was employed to efficiently sample the value of aquifer properties and geometry parameters. Through quantitative sensitivity analysis, the impacts of all the input parameters are ranked. Aquifer permeability was found to be of significant importance to the geomechanical response to the injection. To study the influence of uncertainty of the permeability distribution in the aquifer, an additional series of tests is presented, based on a default permeability distribution site sample with various distribution deviations generated by the Monte Carlo sampling method. The results of the test series show that the uncertainty of permeability distributions significantly affect the displacement and possible failure zone.