InterPore2025

3D modeling of Ostwald ripening in multi-component carbon storage

19 May 2025, 17:25

15m

Oral Presentation (MS09) Pore-scale modelling MS09

Speaker

Jacques Franc (Université de Pau Pays d'Adour (UPPA) / Laboratoire des Fluides Complexes et de leurs Réservoirs (LFCR))

Description

The geologic carbon sequestration and storage has been marked as one of
the solution to remediate Global Warming. Structural and capillary trapping, residual trapping, solubility trapping and mineral trapping have been selected as important trapping processes to secure storage over time.
The stability of trapped $C{O}_2$ in geological reservoir is then a key factor in feasibility assessments and storage capacity predictions. Recently, many studies grew interest in Ostwald ripening during storage as a potential mechanism leading to bubble coalescence and hence potential instabilities.
Pore Network Modeling (PNM) is used here as a tool to enable simulation over larger networks. Its modeling of $C{O}_2$ ganglia is based on work from [Mehmani and Xu, 2022], capturing breakthrough, snap-off and drainage/re-imbibition events on multiple ganglia. It uses classical compositional transport in the brine-rich phase. The gas-rich phase is composed of multiple ganglia that served as boundary condition and are sequentially updated with respect to composition in their neighboring pores. After convergence, the gas distribution inside the ganglia is decided upon a stability test. It offers a modeling solution for different mechanisms, rock heterogeneities and conditions. It is also usually used as a first step for upscaling from pore to core scale, using statistically equivalent initial conditions and validating in the sense of distribution.
Complete 3D dynamics of ganglia are explored in different pore and throat radii’s heterogeneities. Adjunction of an inert gas with a lower or no solubility in brine (e.g $N_2$) is also explored as a way of altering equilibrium state and hence ripening.
In the future similar modeling effort can be conducted to explore ripening occurring during $H_2$ storage. Its beneficial effects in re-mobilizing gas in order to produce it can be asserted under different storage conditions and production conditions.