Offsetting Water Requirements and Stress with Enhanced Water Recovery from CO2 Storage

Hunter, Kelsey Anne¹ 

[1] Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

关键词: Earth Sciences;   

DOI  :  10.2172/1296706
RP-ID  :  LA-UR--16-26021
PID  :  OSTI ID: 1296706

学科分类：环境科学（综合）

美国|英语

来源: SciTech Connect

【 摘 要 】

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) operations ultimately require injecting and storing CO₂ into deep saline aquifers. Reservoir pressure typically rises as CO₂ is injected increasing the cost and risk of CCUS and decreasing viable storage within the formation. Active management of the reservoir pressure through the extraction of brine can reduce the pressurization while providing a number of benefits including increased storage capacity for CO₂, reduced risks linked to reservoir overpressure, and CO₂ plume management. Through enhanced water recovery (EWR), brine within the saline aquifer can be extracted and treated through desalination technologies which could be used to offset the water requirements for thermoelectric power plants or local water needs such as agriculture, or produce a marketable such as lithium through mineral extraction. This paper discusses modeled scenarios of CO₂ injection into the Rock Springs Uplift (RSU) formation in Wyoming with EWR. The Finite Element Heat and Mass Transfer Code (FEHM), developed by Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), was used to model CO₂ injection with brine extraction and the corresponding pressure tradeoffs. Scenarios were compared in order to analyze how pressure management through the quantity and location of brine extraction wells can increase CO₂ storage capacity and brine extraction while reducing risks associated with over pressurization. Future research will couple a cost-benefit analysis to these simulations in order to determine if the benefit of subsurface pressure management and increase CO₂ storage capacity can outweigh multiple extraction wells with increased cost of installation and maintenance as well as treatment and/or disposal of the extracted brine.