Accelerating CO2 Dissolution in Saline Aquifers for Geological Storage — Mechanistic and Sensitivity Studies

One of the important challenges in geological storage of CO2 is predicting, monitoring, and managing the risk of leakage from natural and artificial pathways such as fractures, faults, and abandoned wells. The risk of leakage arises from the buoyancy of free-phase mobile CO2 (gas or supercritical fluid). When CO2 dissolves into formation brine, or is trapped as residual phase, buoyancy forces are negligible and the CO2 may be retained with minimal risk of leakage. Solubility trapping may therefore enable more secure storage in aquifer systems than is possible in dry systems (e.g., depleted gas fields) with comparable geological seals. A crucial question for an aquifer system is, what is the rate of dissolution? In this paper, we address that question by presenting a method for accelerating CO2 dissolution in saline aquifers by injecting brine on top of the injected CO2. We investigate the effects of different aquifer properties and determine the rate of solubility trapping in an idealized aquifer geometry. The acceleration of dissolution by brine injection increases the rate of solubility trapping in saline aquifers and therefore increases the security of storage. We show that, without brine injection, only a small fraction (less than 8%) of the injected CO2 would be trapped by dissolving in formation brine within 200 years. For the particular cases studied, however, more than 50% of the injected CO2 dissolves in the aquifer as induced by brine injection. Since the energy cost for brine injection can be small (<20%) compared to the energy required for CO2 compression for a 5-fold increase in dissolution, such reservoir engineering techniques might be viable and practical for accelerating dissolution of CO2. The environmental benefit would be to decrease the risk of CO2 leakage at reasonably low cost.