Plume Migration of Different Carbon Dioxide Phases During Geological Storage in Deep Saline Aquifers

Abstract

This study estimates the plume migration of mobile supercritical phase (flowing), aqueous phase (dissolved), and ionic phase CO2 (bicarbonate), and evaluates the spatial distribution of immobile supercritical phase (residual) and mineral phase CO2 (carbonates) when CO2 was sequestered. This utilized a simulation, in an anticline structure of a deep saline aquifer in the Tiechenshan (TCS) field, Taiwan. All of the trapping mechanisms and different CO2 phases were studied using the fully coupled geochemical equation-of-state GEM compositional simulator. The mobile supercritical phase CO2 moved upward and then accumulated in the up-dip of the structure because of buoyancy. A large amount of immobile supercritical phase CO2 was formed at the rear of the moving plume where the imbibition process prevailed. Both the aqueous and ionic phase CO2 finally accumulated in the down-dip of the structure because of convection. The plume volume of aqueous phase CO2 was larger than that of the supercritical phase CO2, because the convection process increased vertical sweep efficiency. The up-dip of the struc- ture was not the major location for mineralization, which is different from mobile supercritical phase CO2 accumulation.

Key points

• Wintertime surface wind speed near Taiwan has been weakening

• The decreased wind speed is attributable to less SST warming in North Pacific

• Air-sea interaction enhances the southerly wind anomalies near Taiwan in winter