Immiscible Displacements and Capillary Trapping in CO2 Storage

We measure the residual non-wetting phase saturation of super-critical carbon dioxide in a Berea sandstone core. We use the porous plate method while a stirred reactor ensures equilibrium between the carbon dioxide and brine. We also measure carbon dioxide-brine contact angles on the porous plate to...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Pentland, C., El-Maghraby, R., Georgiadis, A., Iglauer, Stefan, Blunt, M.
Other Authors: ICGGCT
Format: Conference Paper
Published: ICGGCT 2010
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/45810
Description
Summary:We measure the residual non-wetting phase saturation of super-critical carbon dioxide in a Berea sandstone core. We use the porous plate method while a stirred reactor ensures equilibrium between the carbon dioxide and brine. We also measure carbon dioxide-brine contact angles on the porous plate to understand wetting behavior in the experiment. The application of the work is for carbon dioxide storage in aquifers, where capillary trapping is a rapid and effective mechanism to render the injected fluid immobile. The experiment was performed at temperature and pressure representative of potential subsurface storage formations. The measured residual saturation is 37% which is lower than the measured residual for an oil-brine system on a similar core (48%), but higher than measured by other authors for super-critical CO2 in Berea sandstone. We suggest that super-critical CO2 is still non-wetting in sandstones with considerable trapping and discuss the implications for CO2 storage in aquifers.