Transport of perfluorocarbon tracers in the Cranfield Geological Carbon Sequestration Project

Mohamad Reza Soltanian, Mohammad Amin Amooie, David Cole, David Graham, Susan Pfiffner, Tommy Phelps, Joachim Moortgat

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

13 Scopus citations

Abstract

A field-scale carbon dioxide (CO2) injection pilot project was conducted by the Southeast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (SECARB) at Cranfield, Mississippi. Two associated campaigns in 2009 and 2010 were carried out to co-inject perfluorocarbon tracers (PFTs) and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) with CO2. Tracers in gas samples from two observation wells were analyzed to construct breakthrough curves. In this work, we present the field data and numerical modeling of the flow and transport of CO2, brine, and tracers. A high-resolution static model of the formation geology in the detailed area study (DAS) was used to capture the impact of connected flow pathways created by fluvial channels on breakthrough curves and breakthrough times of PFTs and SF6 tracers. We use the cubic-plus-association (CPA) equation of state, which takes into account the polar nature of water molecules, to describe the phase behavior of CO2–brine-tracer mixtures. Our simulated results show good agreement for the 2009 tracer campaign in Cranfield, while a larger discrepancy emerges by 2010. The combination of multiple tracer injection pulses with detailed numerical simulations proves to be a powerful tool in constraining both formation properties and how complex flow paths develop over time.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)650-671
Number of pages22
JournalGreenhouse Gases: Science and Technology
Volume8
Issue number4
StatePublished - Aug 2018

Funding

We thank Barry Freifeld and Robert Trautz for assistance with SF6 injections and U-tube sampling, and the Southeast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (SECARB) (managed by the Southern State Energy Board) for leading the early test project of CO2 injection at Cranfield. We also appreciate the help from Seyyed Abolfazl Hosseini and Susan Hovorka in sharing detailed reservoir static models for the Cranfield site. The project was supported in part by the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy funding to Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) under project FEAA-045. ORNL is managed by UT-Battelle for the US DOE under Contract DE-AC05-00OR22725. Correspondence to: Mohamad Reza Soltanian, University of Cincinnati, Department of Geology, Cincinnati, OH, USA. E-mail: [email protected] ∗This manuscript has been co-authored by UT-Battelle, LLC under Contract No. DE12 AC05-00OR22725 with the US Department of Energy. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. The Department of Energy will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan). Received January 14, 2018; revised April 13, 2018; accepted May 8, 2018 Published online at Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/ghg.1786

Keywords

  • CO sequestration
  • Cranfield site
  • cubic-plus-association equation of state
  • fluvial depositional environment
  • perfluorocarbon tracers
  • reservoir simulation

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