Browsing by Subject "Sequestration"
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Item Aquifer Management for CO2 Sequestration(2010-07-14) Anchliya, AbhishekStorage of carbon dioxide is being actively considered for the reduction of green house gases. To make an impact on the environment CO2 should be put away on the scale of gigatonnes per annum. The storage capacity of deep saline aquifers is estimated to be as high as 1,000 gigatonnes of CO2.(IPCC). Published reports on the potential for sequestration fail to address the necessity of storing CO2 in a closed system. This work addresses issues related to sequestration of CO2 in closed aquifers and the risk associated with aquifer pressurization. Through analytical modeling we show that the required volume for storage and the number of injection wells required are more than what has been envisioned, which renders geologic sequestration of CO2 a profoundly nonfeasible option for the management of CO2 emissions unless brine is produced to create voidage and pressure relief. The results from our analytical model match well with a numerical reservoir simulator including the multiphase physics of CO2 sequestration. Rising aquifer pressurization threatens the seal integrity and poses a risk of CO2 leakage. Hence, monitoring the long-term integrity of CO2 storage reservoirs will be a critical aspect for making geologic sequestration a safe, effective and acceptable method for greenhouse gas control. Verification of long-term CO2 residence in receptor formations and quantification of possible CO2 leaks are required for developing a risk assessment framework. Important aspects of pressure falloff tests for CO2 storage reservoirs are discussed with a focus on reservoir pressure monitoring and leakage detection. The importance of taking regular pressure falloffs for a commercial sequestration project and how this can help in diagnosing an aquifer leak will be discussed. The primary driver for leakage in bulk phase injection is the buoyancy of CO2 under typical deep reservoir conditions. Free-phase CO2 below the top seal is prone to leak if a breach happens in the top seal. Consequently, another objective of this research is to propose a way to engineer the CO2 injection system in order to accelerate CO2 dissolution and trapping. The engineered system eliminates the buoyancy-driven accumulation of free gas and avoids aquifer pressurization by producing brine out of the system. Simulations for 30 years of CO2 injection followed by 1,000 years of natural gradient show how CO2 can be securely and safely stored in a relatively smaller closed aquifer volume and with a greater storage potential. The engineered system increases CO2 dissolution and capillary trapping over what occurs under the bulk phase injection of CO2. This thesis revolves around identification, monitoring and mitigation of the risks associated with geological CO2 sequestration.Item Arsenate uptake, sequestration and reduction by a freshwater cyanobacterium: a potenial biologic control of arsenic in South Texas(Texas A&M University, 2005-08-29) Markley, Christopher ThomasThe toxicity and adverse health effects of arsenic are widely known. It is generally accepted that sorption/desorption reactions with oxy-hydroxide minerals (iron, manganese) control the fate and transport of inorganic arsenic in surface waters through adsorption and precipitation-dissolution processes. In terrestrial environments with limited reactive iron, recent data suggest organoarsenicals are potentially important components of the biogeochemical cycling of arsenic in near-surface environments. Elevated arsenic levels are common in South Texas from geogenic processes (weathering of As-containing rock units) and anthropogenic sources (a byproduct from decades of uranium mining). Sediments collected from South Texas show low reactive iron concentrations, undetectable in many areas, making oxy-hydroxide controls on arsenic unlikely. Studies have shown that eukaryotic algae isolated from arsenic-contaminated waters have increased tolerance to arsenate toxicity and the ability to uptake and biotransform arsenate. In this experiment, net uptake of arsenic over time by a freshwater cyanobacterium never previously exposed to arsenate was quantified as a function of increasing As concentrations and increasing N:P ratios. Toxic effects were not evident when comparing cyanobacterial growth, though extractions indicate accumulation of intracellular arsenic by the cyanobacterium. Increasing N:P ratios has minimal effect on net arsenate uptake over an 18 day period. However, cyanobacteria were shown to reduce arsenate at rates faster than the system can re-oxidize the arsenic suggesting gross arsenate uptake may be much higher. Widespread arsenate reduction by cyanobacterial blooms would increase arsenic mobility and potential toxicity and may be useful as a biomarker of arsenic exposure in oxic surface water environments.Item Effect of flue gas impurities on the process of injection and storage of carbon dioxide in depleted gas reservoirs(Texas A&M University, 2005-11-01) Nogueira de Mago, Marjorie CarolinaPrevious experiments - injecting pure CO2 into carbonate cores - showed that the process is a win-win technology, sequestrating CO2 while recovering a significant amount of hitherto unrecoverable natural gas that could help defray the cost of CO2 sequestration. In this thesis, I report my findings on the effect of flue gas ??impurities?? on the displacement of natural gas during CO2 sequestration, and results on unconfined compressive strength (UCS) tests to carbonate samples. In displacement experiments, corefloods were conducted at 1,500 psig and 70??C, in which flue gas was injected into an Austin chalk core containing initially methane. Two types of flue gases were injected: dehydrated flue gas with 13.574 mole% CO2 (Gas A), and treated flue gas (N2, O2 and water removed) with 99.433 mole% CO2 (Gas B). The main results of this study are as follows. First, the dispersion coefficient increases with concentration of ??impurities??. Gas A exhibits the largest dispersion coefficients, 0.18-0.25 cm2/min, compared to 0.13-0.15 cm2/min for Gas B, and 0.15 cm2/min for pure CO2. Second, recovery of methane at breakthrough is relatively high, ranging from 86% OGIP for pure CO2, 74-90% OGIP for Gas B, and 79-81% for Gas A. Lastly, injection of Gas A would sequester the least amount of CO2 as it contains about 80 mole% nitrogen. From the view point of sequestration, Gas A would be least desirable while Gas B appears to be the most desirable as separation cost would probably be cheaper than that for pure CO2 with similar gas recovery. For UCS tests, corefloods were conducted at 1,700 psig and 65??C in such a way that the cell throughput of CO2 simulates near-wellbore throughput. This was achieved through increasing the injection rate and time of injection. Corefloods were followed by porosity measurement and UCS tests. Main results are presented as follows. First, the UCS of the rock was reduced by approximately 30% of its original value as a result of the dissolution process. Second, porosity profiles of rock samples increased up to 2.5% after corefloods. UCS test results indicate that CO2 injection will cause weakening of near-wellbore formation rock.Item Empirical analysis of fault seal capacity for CO₂ sequestration, Lower Miocene, Texas Gulf Coast(2012-05) Nicholson, Andrew Joseph; Meckel, Timothy Ashworth; Tinker, Scott W. (Scott Wheeler); Trevino, Ramon H.; Steel, Ronald J.The Gulf Coast of Texas has been proposed as a high capacity storage region for geologic sequestration of anthropogenic CO₂. The Miocene section within the Texas State Waters is an attractive offshore alternative to onshore sequestration. However, the stratigraphic targets of interest highlight a need to utilize fault-bounded structural traps. Regional capacity estimates in this area have previously focused on simple volumetric estimations or more sophisticated fill-to-spill scenarios with faults acting as no-flow boundaries. Capacity estimations that ignore the static and dynamic sealing capacities of faults may therefore be inaccurate. A comprehensive fault seal analysis workflow for CO₂-brine membrane fault seal potential has been developed for geologic site selection in the Miocene section of the Texas State Waters. To reduce uncertainty of fault performance, a fault seal calibration has been performed on 6 Miocene natural gas traps in the Texas State Waters in order to constrain the capillary entry pressures of the modeled fault gouge. Results indicate that modeled membrane fault seal capacity for the Lower Miocene section agrees with published global fault seal databases. Faults can therefore serve as effective seals, as suggested by natural hydrocarbon accumulations. However, fault seal capacity is generally an order of magnitude lower than top seal capacity in the same stratigraphic setting, with implications for storage projects. For a specific non-hydrocarbon producing site studied for sequestration (San Luis Pass salt dome setting) with moderately dipping (16°) traps (i.e. high potential column height), membrane fault seal modeling is shown to decrease fault-bound trap area, and therefore storage capacity volume, compared with fill-to-spill modeling. However, using the developed fault seal workflow at other potential storage sites will predict the degree to which storage capacity may approach fill-to-spill capacity, depending primarily on the geology of the fault (shale gouge ratio – SGR) and the structural relief of the trap.Item Use of 3-dimensional dynamic modeling of CO₂ injection for comparison to regional static capacity assessments of Miocene sandstone reservoirs in the Texas State Waters, Gulf of Mexico(2013-05) Wallace, Kerstan Josef; Young, Michael H.; Meckel, Timothy AshworthGeologic sequestration has been suggested as a viable method for greenhouse gas emission reduction. Regional studies of CO₂ storage capacity are used to estimate available storage, yet little work has been done to tie site specific results to regional estimates. In this study, a 9,258,880 acre (37469.4 km²) area of the coastal and offshore Texas Miocene interval is evaluated for CO₂ storage capacity using a static volumetric approach, which is essentially a discounted pore volume calculation. Capacity is calculated for the Miocene interval above overpressure depth and below depths where CO₂ is not supercritical. The goal of this study is to determine the effectiveness of such a regional capacity assessment, by performing refinement techniques that include simple analytical and complex reservoir injection simulations. Initial refinement of regional estimates is performed through net sand picking which is used instead of the gross thickness assumed in the standard regional calculation. The efficiency factor is recalculated to exclude net-to-gross considerations, and a net storage capacity estimate is calculated. Initial reservoir-scale refinement is performed by simulating injection into a seismically mapped saline reservoir, near San Luis Pass. The refinement uses a simplified analytical solution that solves for pressure and fluid front evolution through time (Jain and Bryant, 2011). Porosity, permeability, and irreducible water saturation are varied to generate model runs for 6,206 samples populated using data from the Atlas of Northern Gulf of Mexico Gas and Oil Reservoirs (Seni, 2006). As a final refinement step, a 3D dynamic model mesh is generated. Nine model cases are generated for homogeneous, statistically heterogeneous, and seismic-based heterogeneous meshes to observe the effect of various geologic parameters on injection capacity. We observe downward revisions (decreases) in total capacity estimation with increasingly refined geologic data and scale. Results show that estimates of storage capacity can decrease significantly (by as much as 88%) for the single geologic setting investigated. Though this decrease depends on the criteria used for capacity comparison and varies within a given region, it serves to illustrate the potential overestimation of regional capacity assessments compared to estimates that include additional geologic complexity at the reservoir scale.