One key area for the SUCCEED is research into the geochemical, geomechanical and geophysical response of reservoirs to CO₂ injection.

The aim is to understand the response of carbonate rocks to the injection of supercritical CO₂ at high-pressure/high-temperature reservoir conditions, seismic response, impact on flow properties, geochemistry and the integrity of the reservoir rock on change in strength.

The results will be used by the team when looking at field performance, as well as long-term injection strategies planning.

The work is led by Delft University of Technology.

Project activities

The long term consequences of implementing CO₂ injection, like that used at Hellisheidi, are still unknown. SUCCEED aims to understand the changes to the bedrock and its potential impacts on porosity, permeability and CO₂ storage capacity.

The team will mimic the reservoir conditions at different stages in the life of an CO₂ injection operations and identify the geochemical, geomechanical petrophysical and seismic properties of altered reservoir rocks from both field sites.

There are two core activities being run in this area:

1. TU Delft and Imperial College London will perform controlled fluid-injection experiments at in-situ conditions while simultaneously monitoring with active acoustic-wave systems the change in acoustic signals during fluid injection gaining a better understanding of the degree of mechanical, petrophysical etc. changes occurring in rocks during CO₂ injection, as well as estimating what the expected signal could be for seismic monitoring of reservoir injection.
2. The team will collect samples from the two field sites and will run a series of processes to mimic what is taking place before, during and after CO₂ injection and the results of these series of experiments will then be correlated with the field monitored data on geochemistry and seismic monitoring, and be used as input for interpretation of the data found when modelling CO₂ injection as well as the numerical modelling used when modelling the reservoirs.