Single-well experimental design for studying residual trapping of supercritical carbon dioxide

The objective of our research is to design a single-well injection-withdrawal test to evaluate residual phase trapping at potential CO2 geological storage sites. Given the significant depths targeted for CO2 storage and the resulting high costs associated with drilling to those depths, it is attractive to develop a single-well test that can provide data to assess reservoir properties and reduce uncertainties in the appraisal phase of site investigation. The main challenges in a single-well test design include (1) difficulty in quantifying the amount of CO2 that has dissolved into brine or migrated away from the borehole; (2) non-uniqueness and uncertainty in the estimate of the residual gas saturation (S-gr) due to correlations among various parameters; and (3) the potential biased S-gr estimate due to unaccounted heterogeneity of the geological medium. To address each of these challenges, we propose (1) to use a physical-based model to simulation test sequence and inverse modeling to analyze data information content and to quantify uncertainty; (2) to jointly use multiple data types generated from different kinds of tests to constrain the S-gr estimate; and (3) to reduce the sensitivity of the designed tests to geological heterogeneity by conducting the same test sequence in both a water-saturated system and a system with residual gas saturation. To perform the design calculation, we build a synthetic model and conduct a formal analysis for sensitivity and uncertain quantification. Both parametric uncertainty and geological uncertainty are considered in the analysis. Results show (1) uncertainty in the estimation of S-gr can be reduced by jointly using multiple data types and repeated tests; and (2) geological uncertainty is essential and needs to be accounted for in the estimation of S-gr and its uncertainty. The proposed methodology is applied to the design of a CO2 injection test at CO2CRC's Otway Project Site, Victoria, Australia. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.