InterPore2026

Mesoscale simulations for modeling clay swelling due to completion fluids in CCS

20 May 2026, 09:35

15m

Oral Presentation (MS01) Porous Media for a Green World: Energy & Climate MS01

Speaker

Dr Vishal Ahuja (Shell India Markets Private Limited (Shell Projects and Technology))

Description

Clay swelling is a critical concern for Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) projects, as brine-based completion fluid (injected before CO2 injection) with different salinity than that of the formation water can trigger clay swelling, which can lead to permeability reduction and formation damage and in the worst case wellbore instabilities or even total abandonment of the well. Numerous studies have investigated the effects of adding different cations in the injected brine on mitigating the permeability reduction due to clay swelling. Recent micromodel experiments have provided clear evidence of this phenomenon at the pore-scale.[1] Recent advances in imaging have led to detailed pore-scale investigations of this phenomenon with microCT imaging conducted during core-flooding experiments.[2] These experiments reveal that besides the composition of the injected brine and the type of clay present in the reservoir, there are a number of factors affecting clay swelling such as the size, shape and distribution of grains and clays. We perform mesoscale simulations to study these various factors affecting clay swelling. We generate synthetic grain-packs of different shapes and sizes with different spatial distributions of clay and different extent of clay swelling and then perform Multiple Relaxation Time Lattice Boltzmann Method (MRTLBM) simulations to study the impact of clay swelling on permeability reduction. Our results show that the same amount of clay distributed differently in the form of interstitial pellets vs grain coatings can lead to different extents of permeability reduction. While this synthetic geometry gives us lots of degrees of freedom to play with and see the effect of various factors affecting clay swelling, we also validate our simulation methodology with experimental data of microCT scans performed during core-flooding experiments.
References:
[1] Mehdizad et al., JPSE 214 2022, 110561.
[2] Aksu et al., GeoResJ 7 2015, 1, 1-3.