Geochemical and solute transport modelling for CO2 storage, what to expect from it?

Geochemistry plays an important role when assessing the impact Of CO2 storage. Due to the potential corrosive character of CO2, it might affect the chemical and physical properties of the wells, the reservoir and its surroundings and increase the environmental and financial risk Of CO2 storage projects in deep geological structures. An overview of geochemical and solute transport modelling for CO2 storage purposes is given, its data requirements and gaps are highlighted, and its progress over the last 10 years is discussed. Four different application domains are identified: long-term integrity modelling, injectivity modelling, well integrity modelling and experimental modelling and their current state of the art is discussed. One of the major gaps remaining is the lack of basic thermodynamical and kinetic data at relevant temperature and pressure conditions for each of these four application domains. Real challenges are the coupled solute transport and geomechanical modelling, the modelling of impurities in the CO2 stream and pore-scale modelling applications. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.