Pore-scale flow simulation of supercritical CO2 and oil flow for simultaneous CO2 geo-sequestration and enhanced oil recovery

• Published in: Environmental science and pollution research international Vol. 29; no. 50; pp. 76003 - 76025
• Main Authors: Chowdhury, Satyajit, Rakesh, Mayank, Medhi, Srawanti, Trivedi, Japan, Sangwai, Jitendra S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.10.2022; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Aquatic Pollution; Atmospheric Protection/Air Quality Control/Air Pollution; Carbon dioxide; Carbon dioxide fixation; Carbon sequestration; Computational fluid dynamics; Computer applications; Crude oil; Earth and Environmental Science; Ecotoxicology; Emissions; Emissions control; Energy equation; Enhanced oil recovery; Environment; Environmental Chemistry; Environmental Health; Environmental science; Equations of state; Flow simulation; Fluid dynamics; Free energy; Greenhouse gases; Heavy petroleum; Hydrodynamics; Oil; Oil recovery; Oil reservoirs; Physical properties; Pressure; Pressure effects; Research Article; Reservoirs; Waste Water Technology; Water Management; Water Pollution Control; Carbon capture and utilization; Enhanced oil recovery (EOR); CO; Pore-scale investigation; geo-sequestration; Computational fluid dynamics (CFD)
• ISSN: 0944-1344; 1614-7499
• DOI: 10.1007/s11356-022-21217-7

Recently, carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) with enhanced oil recovery (EOR) have gained a significant traction in an attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Information on pore-scale CO 2 fluid behavior is vital for efficient geo-sequestration and EOR. This study scrutinizes the behavior of supercritical CO 2 (sc-CO 2 ) under different reservoir temperature and pressure conditions through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis, applying it to light and heavy crude oil reservoirs. The effects of reservoir pressure (20 MPa and 40 MPa), reservoir temperature (323 K and 353 K), injection velocities (0.005 m/s, 0.001 m/s, and 0.0005 m/s), and in situ oil properties (835.3 kg/m 3 and 984 kg/m 3 ) have been considered as control variables. This study couples the Helmholtz free energy equation (equation of state) to consider the changes in physical properties of sc-CO 2 owing to variations in reservoir pressure and temperature conditions. It has been found that the sc-CO 2 sequestration is more efficient in the case of light oil than heavy oil reservoirs. Notably, an increase in temperature and pressure does not affect the trend of sc-CO 2 breakthrough or oil recovery in the case of a reservoir bearing light oil. For heavy oil reservoirs with high pressures, sc-CO 2 sequestration or oil recovery was higher due to the significant increase in density and viscosity of sc-CO 2 . Quantitative analysis showed that the stabilizing factor ( ε ) appreciably varies for light oil at low velocities while higher sensitivity was displayed for heavy oil at high velocities. Graphical abstract