Hydrogen-brine mixture PVT data for reservoir simulation of hydrogen storage in deep saline aquifers

Abstract

An accurate assessment of hydrogen storage mechanisms in an aquifer storage project requires detailed flow and transport modeling. The equation-of-state (EOS) based compositional phase equilibrium approaches make these models computationally expensive. This paper proposes using the black-oil simulation approach for the specific case of hydrogen storage in saline aquifers to reduce the computational burden of the flow simulations. We present a simple and efficient algorithm for converting hydrogen-brine phase equilibrium compositional data obtained from the Redlich and Kwong EOS into black-oil PVT data. The algorithm accurately predicts the hydrogen-brine transport properties required for the black-oil flow simulations of underground hydrogen storage. Numerical simulations for a simple cyclic hydrogen injection-production case reveal that the black-oil simulations are at least one order of magnitude faster than the compositional ones without loss of accuracy. These results support applying the black-oil PVT model and the simulation approach for numerical simulations of large-scale hydrogen storage in deep saline aquifers.