A Molecular Dynamics Study on CO$_2$ Diffusion Coefficient in Saline Water Under a Wide Range of Temperatures, Pressures, and Salinity Concentrations: Implications to CO2 Geological Storage

TL;DR

This study uses Molecular Dynamics simulations to analyze how temperature, salinity, and different salts affect CO2 diffusion in saline water, providing new correlations and insights crucial for CO2 geological storage.

Contribution

It introduces a new precise correlation for CO2 diffusion coefficients in saline water and explores the effects of various salts, temperatures, and pressures on diffusion behavior.

Findings

CO2 diffusion decreases with higher salinity, especially at elevated temperatures.

Temperature increases enhance CO2 diffusion due to hydration shell size reduction.

Pressure changes have negligible impact on CO2 diffusion coefficients.

Abstract

Carbon dioxide (CO$_2$) sequestration in saline aquifers has been introduced as one of the most practical, long-term, and safe solutions to tackle a growing threat originating from the emission of CO$_2$. Successfully executing and planning the process necessitates a comprehensive understanding of CO$_2$ transport properties -- particularly the diffusion coefficient, influencing the behavior of CO$_2$ dissolution in water/brine regarding the shape of viscous fingers, the onset of instabilities, etc. In this research, Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulation was employed to compute the CO$_2$ diffusion coefficient in various NaCl saline water concentrations under the broad spectrum of temperatures and pressures to acquire a data-set. The NaCl concentration increase gives rise to a decrease in the CO$_2$ diffusion coefficient, by which the reduction is most notably at higher temperatures. In addition, the rise in the CO$_2$ diffusion at elevated temperatures can be explained by the cation's hydration shell size reduction with temperature increment due to intensifying repulsive forces among water molecules. A new precise correlation is proposed for estimating CO$_2$ diffusion coefficients. Regarding the pressure variation effects, no tangible changes are observed with pressure increase. Furthermore, the variability of the CO$_2$ diffusion coefficient in the presence of other salts, namely MgCl2, CaCl2, KCl, and Na2SO4, were computed separately. Comparing the influence of various salts, CaCl2 and KCl have the highest and lowest effect on the CO$_2$ diffusion coefficient, respectively. Finally, a set of direct numerical simulations was conducted to study the impact of the CO$_2$ diffusion coefficient on the CO$_2$ dissolution process. The results shed light on the importance of CO$_2$ diffusion coefficient changes under the saline water condition in predicting dissolution process behavior and further calculations.