Preliminary Experiments for a Chemical Reactive Barrier as a Leakage Mitigation Technology

Abstract

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) risk assessments have proposed technologies to remediate carbon dioxide (CO2) leakage. One of these technologies utilizes an alkaline silicate solution forming a chemical barrier when mixed with CO2-enriched water. This study characterizes the physical properties of the silicate solution and the formation of the chemical barrier in a small-scale flow-through experiment. Results show that barrier formation using the silicate solution is effective as a drop in permeability by one order of magnitude is observed in our preliminary experiments. These preliminary results will be used for the design of future core-flood experiments and reactive-transport modelling.