Computational studies of two-phase cement-CO2-brine interaction in wellbore environments
- Los Alamos National Laboratory
Wellbore integrity is essential to ensuring long-term isolation of buoyant supercritical CO{sub 2} during geologic sequestration of CO{sub 2}. In this report, we summarize recent progress in numerical simulations of cement-brine-CO{sub 2} interactions with respect to migration of CO{sub 2} outside of casing. Using typical values for the hydrologic properties of cement, caprock (shale) and reservoir materials, we show that the capillary properties of good quality cement will prevent flow of CO{sub 2} into and through cement. Rather, CO{sub 2}, if present, is likely to be confined to the casing-cement or cement-formation interfaces. CO{sub 2} does react with the cement by diffusion from the interface into the cement, in which case it produces distinct carbonation fronts within the cement. This is consistent with observations of cement performance at the CO{sub 2}-enhanced oil recovery SACROC Unit in West Texas (Carey et al. 2007). For poor quality cement, flow through cement may occur and would produce a pattern of uniform carbonation without reaction fronts. We also consider an alternative explanation for cement carbonation reactions as due to CO{sub 2} derived from caprock. We show that carbonation reactions in cement are limited to surficial reactions when CO{sub 2} pressure is low (< 10 bars) as might be expected in many caprock environments. For the case of caprock overlying natural CO{sub 2} reservoirs for millions of years, we consider Scherer and Huet's (2009) hypothesis of diffusive steady-state between CO{sub 2} in the reservoir and in the caprock. We find that in this case, the aqueous CO{sub 2} concentration would differ little from the reservoir and would be expected to produce carbonation reaction fronts in cements that are relatively uniform as a function of depth.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC52-06NA25396
- OSTI ID:
- 992220
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-09-05560; LA-UR-09-5560; TRN: US1007705
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: SPE International Conference on CO2 Capture & Storage ; November 2, 2009 ; San Diego, CA
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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