Assessment of the Area of Review and Leakage Impact for Site 7 using the NRAP-IAM-CCS Tool, Northern Michigan Basin-CarbonSAFE Phase 1 Pre-Feasibility Study
- Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Class VI regulations require owners or operators of carbon storage projects to determine an Area of Review (AoR) representative of project risk to underground sources of drinking water (USDWs). The AoR is an estimate of the project footprint and is used to develop monitoring plans to ensure protection of USDWs. In this syudy, the NRAP-IAM-CS software tool was applied to estimate the AoR and the leakage potential of legacy wells located within the AoR to impact groundwater quality at a carbon storage screening site for the NMB-CS, Phase 1 project. The NRAP-IAM-CS is a science-based toolset developed by the U.S. Department of Energy for quantitative risk assessment of geologic sequestration of carbon dioxide (CO2) (Pawar et al., 2016). The toolset adopts a stochastic approach in which predictions include site uncertainties using storage reservoir, leakage scenario, and shallow groundwater impact reduced order models (ROMs). Risk-based analysis done using the NRAP-IAM-CS yielded an AoR that was comparable to estimates defined by the critical pressure needed move fluid from the reservoir to the overlying USDW through an open wellbore. The risk-based AoR was slightly smaller than that based on the critical pressure (234 km2 compared to 269 km2), because small fluxes did not impact groundwater quality. Leakage from two legacy wells located within the AoR should not impact groundwater quality over the 30-year injection period. Legacy Well 1 penetrates the simulated CO2 plume and would require a permeability of 5 x 10-12 m2 (~5 Darcy) to impact groundwater quality after about 20 years of injection. Legacy Well 2 falls outside of the CO2 plume footprint, where reservoir pressures are too small to generate large enough leakage flux to change groundwater quality even with well permeabilities as high as 5 x 10-11 m2 (~50 Darcy). This work represents one of the first applications of the NRAP toolset for the screening of potential CO2 storage sites. The toolset provides a risk-based method of evaluating the AoR and the impact of CO2 or brine leakage through legacy wells. The following recommendations will strengthen the use of probabilistic assessments for site selection and permitting of Class VI CO2 injection wells.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States); Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC52-07NA27344
- OSTI ID:
- 1460067
- Report Number(s):
- LLNL-TR--753788; 939949
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
A risk-based approach to evaluating the Area of Review and leakage risks at CO2 storage sites
Journal Article
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Thu Nov 21 19:00:00 EST 2019
· International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control
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OSTI ID:1577849