Environmental Monitoring Approach to Enhance Onshore CO2 Storage Site Acceptability: First R&D Results on Shallow Groundwater Aquifer

Abstract

TOTAL has recently launched a RD (ii) the monitoring of surrounding subsurface and surface compartments, far from the subsurface assets, such as in aquifers and near-atmosphere, taking into account health and environmental concerns in case of hypothetical loss of integrity and CO2 and/or brine leakage. In these surrounding environmental compartments, R&D efforts are made to reach pertinent and effective measurements and analyses, and also rely on discriminating techniques (e.g. isotopy of carbon to discriminate its thermogenic/biogenic origins). In addition, cost-effective tools and methodologies are reviewed in order to provide periodically sufficient amount of data during the whole life of a project, from the baseline to the closure phase some decades later. The present article shows the recent progress of TOTAL R&D on in-situ, real-time and remote monitoring strategy in an onshore subsurface environmental context. The efforts are focused on shallow groundwater aquifer. Technologies considered include fiber optic, using both passive and active distributed temperature sensing (DTS), and Point Velocity Probe (PVP). The current program includes lab-scale, field testing and numerical modelling for the initial feasibility study. This first stage of experimental study performed at the lab scale will be followed by experiments in shallow and deep aquifer and in the context of CO2 geological storage pilot project.