Abstract
It has been long recognized that interfacial interactions (interfacial tension, wettability, capillarity and interfacial mass transfer) govern fluid distribution and behaviour in porous media. Therefore the interfacial interactions between CO2 , brine and reservoir oil and/or gas have an important influence on the effectiveness of any CO2 storage operation. There is a lack of experimental data related to interfacial properties for all the geological storage options (oil & gas reservoirs, coalbeds, deep saline aquifers). In the case of deep saline aquifers, there is a gap in data and knowledge of brine-CO2 interfacial properties at storage conditions. More specifically, experimental interfacial tension values and experimental tests in porous media are necessary to better understand the wettability evolution as a function of thermodynamic conditions and it’s effects on fluid flow in the porous media. In this paper, a complete set of experimental values of brine-CO2 Interfaciale Tension (IFT) at pressure, temperature and salt concentration conditions representative of those of a CO2 storage operation. A correlation is derived from experimental data published in a companion paper [Chalbaud C., Robin M., Lombard J.-M., Egermann P., Bertin H. (2009) Interfacial Tension Measurements and Wettability Evaluation for Geological CO2 Storage, Adv. Water Resour. 32, 1, 1-109] to model IFT values. This paper pays particular attention to coreflooding experiments showing that the CO2 partially wets the surface in a Intermediate-Wet (IW) or Oil-Wet (OW) limestone rock. This wetting behavior of CO2 is coherent with observations at the pore scale in glass micromodels and presents a negative impact on the storage capacity of a given site.
Highlights
Large-scale subsurface storage of anthropogenic carbon dioxide is considered as a potential technology for greatly stabilizing greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere [1]
At least three options exist for geological storage of CO2 [2]: oil and gas reservoirs, deep saline aquifers and unmineable coal beds
All results are presented in terms of NaCl molal concentration, in order to allow comparison of the linear relationship between the increase in the Interfaciale Tension (IFT) and the molal concentration of salt observed by previous authors mentioned in the introduction
Summary
Large-scale subsurface storage of anthropogenic carbon dioxide is considered as a potential technology for greatly stabilizing greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere [1]. At least three options exist for geological storage of CO2 [2]: oil and gas reservoirs, deep saline aquifers and unmineable coal beds. Because of its expertise and knowledge of many geological sites considered as prospects for CO2 storage, the oil industry is usually uniquely positioned to sequester CO2, no matter the source. Successful CO2 sequestration in deep saline aquifers and different types of hydrocarbon reservoirs is largely governed by the fluid-fluid and fluid-rock interfacial interactions. These interactions are represented by the Laplace equation (see Eq 1), where the key parameters to take into account are the interfacial tension and the wettability. On the one hand these properties highly influence the flow process, and on the other hand they control the capillary-sealing efficiency: Pc
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