Impact of gas/liquid phase change of CO$_2$ during injection for sequestration

TL;DR

This paper develops a thermodynamics-based multiphase model to accurately predict CO$_2$ phase transitions during sequestration, improving understanding of stress, pressure, and migration behavior in geological formations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel multiphase poromechanics model that predicts CO$_2$ phase changes without prior assumptions, enhancing simulation accuracy for sequestration processes.

Findings

Phase transition significantly affects CO$_2$ density and mobility.

The model predicts the location of phase interfaces dynamically.

Phase change impacts fluid migration and pressure distribution.

Abstract

CO$_2$ sequestration in deep saline formations is an effective and important process to control the rapid rise in CO$_2$ emissions. The process of injecting CO$_2$ requires reliable predictions of the stress in the formation and the fluid pressure distributions -- particularly since monitoring of the CO$_2$ migration is difficult -- to mitigate leakage, prevent induced seismicity, and analyze wellbore stability. A key aspect of CO$_2$ is the gas-liquid phase transition at the temperatures and pressures of relevance to leakage and sequestration, which has been recognized as being critical for accurate predictions but has been challenging to model without \textit{ad hoc} empiricisms. This paper presents a robust multiphase thermodynamics-based poromechanics model to capture the complex phase transition behavior of CO$_2$ and predict the stress and pressure distribution under super- and sub- critical conditions during the injection process. A finite element implementation of the model is applied to analyze the behavior of a multiphase porous system with CO$_2$ as it displaces the fluid brine phase. We find that if CO$_2$ undergoes a phase transition in the geologic reservoir, the spatial variation of the density is significantly affected, and the migration mobility of CO$_2$ decreases in the reservoir. A key feature of our approach is that we do not \textit{a priori} assume the location of the CO$_2$ gas/liquid interface -- or even if it occurs at all -- but rather, this is a prediction of the model, along with the spatial variation of the phase of CO$_2$ and the change of the saturation profile due to the phase change.