Revising the Static Geological Reservoir Model of the Upper Triassic Stuttgart Formation at the Ketzin Pilot Site for CO2 Storage by Integrated Inverse Modelling

Thomas Kempka,Ben Norden,Stefan Lüth,Alexandra Ivanova

doi:10.3390/en10101559

Thomas Kempka, Ben Norden + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/en10101559

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Abstract

The Ketzin pilot site for CO 2 storage in Germany has been operated from 2007 to 2013 with about 67 kt of CO 2 injected into the Upper Triassic Stuttgart Formation. Main objectives of this undertaking were assessing general feasibility of CO 2 storage in saline aquifers as well as testing and integrating efficient monitoring and long-term prediction strategies. The present study aims at revising the latest static geological reservoir model of the Stuttgart Formation by applying an integrated inverse modelling approach. Observation data considered for this purpose include bottomhole pressures recorded during hydraulic testing and almost five years of CO 2 injection as well as gaseous CO 2 contours derived from 3D seismic repeat surveys carried out in 2009 and 2012. Inverse modelling results show a remarkably good agreement with the hydraulic testing and CO 2 injection bottomhole pressures (R 2 = 0.972), while spatial distribution and thickness of the gaseous CO 2 derived from 3D seismic interpretation exhibit a generally good agreement with the simulation results (R 2 = 0.699 to 0.729). The present study successfully demonstrates how the integrated inverse modelling approach, applied for effective permeability calibration in a geological model here, can substantially reduce parameter uncertainty.

Highlights

Geological storage of carbon dioxide (CO2 ) in saline aquifers is considered as significant contribution to mitigation of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere [1], and provides a substantial mitigation measure for climate change and ocean acidification [2] which has been widely discussed and investigated in the past two decades.In this context, geological CO2 storage at pilot scale has been undertaken from 2007 to 2013 at the Ketzin site in Germany with a total of about 67 kt of CO2 injected into the Upper TriassicStuttgart Formation at 620–650 m depth
Two initially independent numerical flow simulation models on hydraulic testing carried out for the purpose of reservoir characterization and actual site operation in terms of CO2 injection have been integrated into one numerical inverse model
This strategy allowed for taking advantage of the most reliable monitoring data acquired at the Ketzin pilot site in a single model calibration process

Summary

Introduction

Geological storage of carbon dioxide (CO2 ) in saline aquifers is considered as significant contribution to mitigation of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere [1], and provides a substantial mitigation measure for climate change and ocean acidification [2] which has been widely discussed and investigated in the past two decades.In this context, geological CO2 storage at pilot scale has been undertaken from 2007 to 2013 at the Ketzin site in Germany with a total of about 67 kt of CO2 injected into the Upper TriassicStuttgart Formation at 620–650 m depth. Energies 2017, 10, 1559 short- to long-term predictions using coupled numerical multiphase flow, hydromechanical and hydrochemical models [14,15,19,20,21] In this context, substantial efforts have been undertaken to integrate data from ongoing on-site field tests and continuous observations as well as laboratory experiments on the Stuttgart Formation reservoir rocks with numerical simulations [12,14,19,20,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32]

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