Honors College Thesis
 

The Effect of Drainage Flow Rate on Fluid Connectivity; Application to Geologic CO₂ Sequestration

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https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/honors_college_theses/1c18dk911

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  • Geologic CO₂ sequestration is a climate change mitigation strategy that involves the injection of supercritical CO₂ into deep underground rock formations. This thesis focuses on capillary trapping in which capillary forces immobilize CO₂ bubbles at the pore scale. During injection of supercritical CO₂, brine is displaced in what is known as the drainage process. Non-wetting fluid (supercritical CO₂) connectivity after drainage has been shown to impact the amount of capillary trapping after drainage. The drainage process (i.e. the CO₂ injection) should be engineered to provide favorable connectivity conditions to promote capillary trapping. This project investigated how drainage flow rate affects NW fluid connectivity. Experiments were conducted on Bentheimer sandstone rock cores with brine as the wetting (W) fluid and air as the non-wetting (NW) fluid. The rock cores were first saturated with brine and then drained at various flow rates. X-ray computed microtomography was used to acquire scans of the cores after saturation and after drainage to analyze the amount and distribution of NW phase fluid present in the pores. The two data sets acquired showed opposite trends between NW fluid connectivity and drainage flow rate. Significantly different NW saturations were reached making it difficult to directly observe the effect of drainage flow rate on fluid connectivity.
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