Benchmarking CO$_2$ Storage Simulations: Results from the 11th Society of Petroleum Engineers Comparative Solution Project

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive benchmarking study of CO$_2$ storage simulation tools from the SPE11 project, analyzing variability sources and emphasizing the impact of unreported human and computational choices.

Contribution

It introduces a global metric for comparing simulation results and highlights the significance of unreported human factors influencing variability in CO$_2$ storage modeling.

Findings

Thermal effects and convective mixing significantly affect results.

Grid resolution strongly influences simulation outcomes.

Unreported human choices are as impactful as reported computational decisions.

Abstract

The 11th Society of Petroleum Engineers Comparative Solution Project (shortened SPE11 herein) benchmarked simulation tools for geological carbon dioxide (CO$_2$) storage. A total of 45 groups from leading research institutions and industry across the globe signed up to participate, with 18 ultimately contributing valid results that were included in the comparative study reported here. This paper summarizes the SPE11. A comprehensive introduction and qualitative discussion of the submitted data are provided, together with an overview of online resources for accessing the full depth of data. A global metric for analyzing the relative distance between submissions is proposed and used to conduct a quantitative analysis of the submissions. This analysis attempts to statistically resolve the key aspects influencing the variability between submissions. The study shows that the major qualitative variation between the submitted results is related to thermal effects, dissolution-driven convective mixing, and resolution of facies discontinuities. Moreover, a strong dependence on grid resolution is observed across all three versions of the SPE11. However, our quantitative analysis suggests that the observed variations are predominantly influenced by factors not documented in the technical responses provided by the participants. We therefore identify that unreported variations due to human choices within the process of setting up, conducting, and reporting on the simulations underlying each SPE11 submission are at least as impactful as the computational choices reported.