Imperial College London
Alternate

DrRonnyPini

Faculty of Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering

Reader in Chemical Engineering
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 7518r.pini Website

 
 
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Location

 

415ACE ExtensionSouth Kensington Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Trevisan:2017:10.1002/2016WR019749,
author = {Trevisan, L and Pini, R and Cihan, A and Birkholzer, JT and Zhou, Q and González-Nicolás, A and Illangasekare, TH},
doi = {10.1002/2016WR019749},
journal = {Water Resources Research},
pages = {485--502},
title = {Imaging and quantification of spreading and trapping of carbon dioxide in saline aquifers using meter-scale laboratory experiments},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2016WR019749},
volume = {53},
year = {2017}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - The  role  of  capillary  forces  during  buoyant  migration  of  CO2  is critical towards plume immobilization within the post-injection phase of a  geological carbon sequestration operation. However, the inherent heterogeneity of the subsurface makes it very challenging to evaluate the effects of capillary forces on the storage capacity  of these formations and to assess in-situ plume evolution. To overcome the lack of accurate and continuous observations at the field scale and to mimic vertical migration and entrapment of realistic CO2 plumes in the presence of a background hydraulic gradient, we conducted two unique long-term experiments in a 2.44 m × 0.5 m tank. X-ray attenuation allowed measuring the evolution of a CO2-surrogate fluid saturation, thus providing direct insight into capillarity- and buoyancy-dominated flow processes occurring under successive drainage  and  imbibition  conditions.  The  comparison of  saturation  distributions  between  two experimental campaigns suggests that layered-type heterogeneity plays an important role on non-wetting phase (NWP) migration and trapping, because it leads to (i) longer displacement times (3.6 months vs. 24 days) to reach stable trapping conditions, (ii) limited vertical migration of the plume (with center of mass at 39% vs. 55% of aquifer thickness), and (iii) immobilization of a larger fraction of injected NWP mass (67.2% vs. 51.5% of injected volume) as compared to the homogenous  scenario.  While  these  observations  confirm  once  more  the  role  of  geological heterogeneity in controlling buoyant flows in the subsurface, they also highlight the importance of characterizing it at scales that are below seismic resolution (1-10 m).
AU  - Trevisan,L
AU  - Pini,R
AU  - Cihan,A
AU  - Birkholzer,JT
AU  - Zhou,Q
AU  - González-Nicolás,A
AU  - Illangasekare,TH
DO  - 10.1002/2016WR019749
EP  - 502
PY  - 2017///
SN  - 1944-7973
SP  - 485
TI  - Imaging and quantification of spreading and trapping of carbon dioxide in saline aquifers using meter-scale laboratory experiments
T2  - Water Resources Research
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2016WR019749
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/43779
VL  - 53
ER  -
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