Development of a coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical model in discontinuous media for carbon sequestration

Journal Article · Sat Jun 22 00:00:00 EDT 2013 · International Journal of Rock Mechanics and Mining Sciences

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijrmms.2013.05.002· OSTI ID:1094900

Fang, Yilin ^[1]; Nguyen, Ba Nghiep ^[1]; Carroll, Kenneth C. ^[1]; Xu, Zhijie ^[1]; Yabusaki, Steven B. ^[1]; Scheibe, Timothy D. ^[1]; Bonneville, Alain ^[1]

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1. Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)

Geomechanical alteration of porous media is generally ignored for most shallow subsurface applications, whereas CO₂ injection, migration, and trapping in deep saline aquifers will be controlled by coupled multifluid flow, energy transfer, and geomechanical processes. The accurate assessment of the risks associated with potential leakage of injected CO₂ and the design of effective injection systems requires that we represent these coupled processes within numerical simulators. The objectives of this study were to develop a coupled thermal-hydro-mechanical model into a single software, and to examine the coupling of thermal, hydrological, and geomechanical processes for simulation of CO₂ injection into the subsurface for carbon sequestration. A numerical model is developed to couple nonisothermal multiphase hydrological and geomechanical processes for prediction of multiple interconnected processes for carbon sequestration in deep saline aquifers. The geomechanics model was based on Rigid Body-Spring Model (RBSM), one of the discrete methods to model discontinuous rock system. Poisson’s effect that was often ignored by RBSM was considered in the model. The simulation of large-scale and long-term coupled processes in carbon capture and storage projects requires large memory and computational performance. Global Array Toolkit was used to build the model to permit the high performance simulations of the coupled processes. The model was used to simulate a case study with several scenarios to demonstrate the impacts of considering coupled processes and Poisson’s effect for the prediction of CO₂ sequestration.

• Research Organization: Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-76RL01830
• OSTI ID: 1094900
• Report Number(s): PNNL-SA-88739
• Journal Information: International Journal of Rock Mechanics and Mining Sciences, Vol. 62; ISSN 1365-1609
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES