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A systematic benchmarking approach for geologic CO2 injection and storage

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Abstract

The idea of this paper is twofold. On one hand, we propose a general systematic for benchmarking of CO2 modelling. On the other hand, we integrate material from the CLEAN project into this framework to demonstrate its applicability (Kühn et al. in Environ Earth Sci, this issue 2011). Benchmarks are an important instrument to gain a better understanding of interacting physico-chemical processes and they are a necessary tool to verify the algorithms and the software dedicated to simulate the separated and differently coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical/chemical processes during injecting and storing CO2 in the subsurface. In general we distinguish between process- and site-related test cases. Process-related benchmarks deal with the required complexity of process coupling as well as equations of state for fluids and constitutive laws for geologic formations. Site-specific benchmarks represent different geological settings for potential CO2 reservoirs, e.g., depleted gas and oil reservoirs as well as deep saline aquifers. The data basis for benchmarking mainly comes from experimental work in the CLEAN project as well as from literature. The benchmarking systematic is aimed at serving as basis for process studies, experimental design as well as for code inter-comparison purposes not only for numerical tools having used by the CLEAN partners but also for upcoming international benchmarking initiatives as well.

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Acknowledgments

The presented work has been funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in the frame of the GEOTECHNOLOGIEN Program, CLEAN (grant ID: 03G0704S) and MONACO projects (grant ID: 03G0785A), KETEP grant by Ministry of Knowledge Economy (MKE) of Korea (2010T100100963) and the Helmholtz Association ("Earth and Environment” program). The conceptual part of this work is also incorporated into the A-DuR (grant ID: 02E10588) and CO2BENCH (grant ID: 03G0797D) projects funded by BMBF. We appreciate the excellent project management by GFZ (Maja Tessmer, Peter Pilz, Michael Kühn) for this research. Finally we cordially thank the reviewers for their expert comments for manuscript improvement.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research–UFZ, Permoserstrasse 15, 04318, Leipzig, Germany

    Olaf Kolditz, Peter Dietrich, Uwe-Jens Görke, Thomas Kalbacher, Uta Sauer, Claudia Schütze, Haibing Shao, Ashok Singh, Joshua Taron, Wenqing Wang & Norihiro Watanabe

  2. Technische Universität Dresden, Helmholtzstrasse 10, 01069, Dresden, Germany

    Olaf Kolditz & Norbert Böttcher

  3. Christian-Albrechts Universität Kiel, Ludewig-Meyn-Str. 10, 24118, Kiel, Germany

    Sebastian Bauer & Christof Beyer

  4. Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources, 124 Gwahang-no, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, 305-350, Korea

    Chan-Hee Park

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  1. Olaf Kolditz
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  2. Sebastian Bauer
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  10. Claudia Schütze
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  12. Ashok Singh
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  13. Joshua Taron
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  14. Wenqing Wang
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  15. Norihiro Watanabe
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Correspondence to Olaf Kolditz.

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Kolditz, O., Bauer, S., Beyer, C. et al. A systematic benchmarking approach for geologic CO2 injection and storage. Environ Earth Sci 67, 613–632 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-012-1656-5

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