Journal of Geology & Geophysics
Open Access

Experimental Procedure of CO₂ Geological Storage

Richard Orville^{* *}Correspondence: Richard Orville, Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Cooperative Institute for Applied Meteorological Studies (CIAMS), Texas A&M University, Texas, USA, Email:

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Description

Global warming is a result of billions of tonnes of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions per year from stationary and non-stationary sources. The atmosphere's CO₂ emissions are partially absorbed by the natural carbon cycle. Contrarily, significant CO₂ emissions build up, making it the main source of greenhouse gas emissions and raising global temperatures. According to estimates, the Earth's temperature was 1°C higher in 2017 than it was in the middle of the twentieth century. CO₂ storage in subsurface formations, which are prevalent throughout the planet, offers a solution to this issue. Each year, deep saline aquifers and other geological formations store millions of tonnes of CO₂. The security of CO₂ containment, fluid dynamics, and storage potential are all greatly impacted by the minute amounts of organic material present in these geological formations. Understanding the behavior of supercritical CO₂ in rock/brine systems necessitates looking at the wetting properties and influencing factors of geological formations. Wettability is a crucial factor in determining the containment security and storage capacity as well as how well injected CO₂ can replace formation water. The wettability of CO₂ depends on a number of variables, including pressure, temperature, and salinity, type of formation, surfactants, and chemicals.

A method that has promise for reducing anthropogenic CO₂ greenhouse gas emissions is the storage of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in porous geological media. The average Earth temperature during the middle of the 20 th century increased by 0.99°C (1.78°F) in 2016, according to a joint analysis from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (NASA and NOAA, 2016). Over the course of two centuries, the global CO₂ emissions increased considerably from 280 ppm in 1750 to 410 ppm in 2020. There are numerous alternative methods that have been used to reduce CO₂ emissions, such as carbon-free wind and solar energy, geothermal energy, hydrogen synthesis, and CO₂ geological storage. Additionally, geological storage of CO₂ has shown to be a successful strategy for lowering anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Millions of tonnes of CO₂ emissions are trapped in geological storage formations worldwide using this technique (i.e., coal bed methane formations, deep saline aquifers, basaltic rocks, depleted hydrocarbon reservoirs, and tight shale formations). The COVID-19 results in the slowdown of global industry, which resulted in a 2.94 billion tonne (8 percent) decrease in the predicted global CO₂ emissions in 2020, which were 36.8 billion tonnes. In order to inject CO₂ into geological storage media, Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) principally relies on extracting CO₂ from anthropogenic sources (such as coal-based thermal power plants) (destined sinks, such as deep saline aquifers and depleted hydrocarbon reservoirs). Following numerous trapping mechanisms, CO₂ is transformed into a porous medium after being delivered into geological storage formations. Those are structural or hydrodynamic trapping, residual or capillary trapping, adsorption trapping, brine and mineral trapping.

CO₂ is initially gathered from fixed CO₂ sources (e.g., chemical processing plants, power generation plants, coal-fired based plants, and several other non-stationary carbon emitters, such as automobiles). The environment receives billions of tonnes of CO₂ from these sources, half of which is used in carbon cycles and other natural processes. The atmosphere picks up almost half of the remaining quantity, growing by 2 ppm annually. Precombustion, oxyfuel combustion, and post combustion capture are the typical foundations of the CO₂ capturing technique. High-pressure compressors are used to compress the (captured) CO₂ (with an operational capacity of more than 10 MPa). Pipelines and cargo ships are used to carry it to the storage facilities. Given the fact that CO₂ is not combustible like natural gas, transportation of this gas is thought to be safe. Finally, compressed CO₂ is injected for permanent immobilization into subsurface formations at appropriate injection parameters (e.g., rate of injection and injection pressure).