Date: Thursday, November 5, 2009 4:30 PM
Location: 366 Hollister Hall
This talk will present an ongoing NYSERDA-supported research project that is aimed at developing a better understanding of the feasibility of CO2 sequestration in Central NY State. After discussing general aspects of geologic carbon sequestration, we will present an introduction into a promising geologic unit for deep carbon sequestration in our region. Assessing the porousity, permeability, and potential storage capacity of a given unit requires both accurate enough geologic characterization of the hostrock and accurate enough synthetic model testing for candidate injection sites. We typically must deal with highly incomplete knowledge of the target horizons, and must relyon remote sensing based on relatively sparse seismic profiles coupled to even sparser drill-sites with borehole data and recovered core samples. This geologic information is then translated into a computational model to test various injection scenarios. Here we are using an under- development porous flow modelling tool designed for unstructured 2d and 3d mesh geometries. These models let us assess probable lengthscales of flow away from injection sites, and will ultimately let us also assess the feasibility of desired and undesired chemical reactions between the injected supercritical CO2 and ambient hostrock. The general methodology will be presenting by discussing several simple 2D and 3D numerical experiments.
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