2008 Darcy Lecture

Geological Storage as a Carbon Mitigation Option
Michael Celia
http://www.ngwa.org/about/ngwref/darcy/current.aspx

4PM Monday May 19, 2008
Colorado School of Mines, Metals Hall - Green Center
Golden CO

Celia is chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Princeton University. He received a B.S. in civil engineering from Lafayette College in 1978, and an M.S. (1979) and Ph.D. (1983) in civil engineering from Princeton University. In 1985, he joined the faculty of MIT, returning to Princeton in 1989 to join the civil engineering faculty. Celia's areas of research include ground water hydrology, ecohydrology, numerical modeling, contaminant transport simulation, and multiphase flow physics. Ongoing projects include pore-scale network modeling to study interface dynamics, reactive transport, and scaling in porous media systems; computational studies of plant responses to variations in soil moisture in water-stressed ecosystems, with a focus on applications in sub-Saharan Africa; and studies associated with large-scale injection of CO₂ into deep brine formations as a possible mitigation strategy for the atmospheric carbon problem. The carbon work is part of a large multidisciplinary effort at Princeton known as the Carbon Mitigation Initiative. Celia served for 10 years as editor of the journal Advances in Water Resources. He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and recipient of the 2005 AGU Hydrologic Sciences Award.

"Geological Storage as a Carbon Mitigation Option" is the title of Celia's Darcy Lecture. Anthropogenic emissions of CO₂ have increased atmospheric concentration of CO₂ by about 35 percent during the past 200 years. The current concentration, at about 385 ppm, represents the highest CO₂ concentration in the last 500,000 years. Projected future emissions will lead to doubling of preindustrial CO₂ concentration within the next 50 years. If this relentless increase of atmospheric CO₂ is to be reduced, or reversed, technological solutions must be implemented on a massive scale. While many options are being considered, one attractive approach is carbon capture and storage, or CCS.

The "geological storage" version of CCS involves capture of CO₂ before it is emitted into the atmosphere and subsequent injection of the CO₂ into deep geological formations. Injection of CO₂ into deep formations leads to a multiphase flow problem that may involve important mass exchange between phases, nonisothermal effects, and complex geochemical reactions. In addition, because enormous quantities of CO₂ must be injected to have any significant impact on the atmospheric carbon problem, the spatial scale of the problem becomes very large.

Broad questions involving the fate of the injected CO₂, including possible leakage of CO₂ out of the formation, as well as the fate of displaced fluids like resident brines, lead to very challenging modeling and analysis problems. Because important leakage pathways can be very localized, and their properties can be highly uncertain, an overall analysis of the system requires resolution of multiple length scales in the context of a probabilistic approach. These requirements render standard numerical simulators ineffective due to excessive computational demands. A series of simplifying assumptions may be proposed to provide more efficient numerical calculations, even to the point of allowing for analytical or semianalytical solutions. Such simplifications, while restrictive in their assumptions, allow for large-scale analysis of leakage in a probabilistic framework while capturing much of the essential physics of the problem. Example calculations illustrate the utility of these methods, and show the current state of leakage estimation. They also lead to a proposal for specific field experiments that can reduce the uncertainty associated with potential leakage pathways.

Sponsored by
Colorado Energy Research Institute and International Ground Water Modeling Center

                        

Directions: Links to Maps of Colorado Denver Golden and Campus (Building #1 in block F on map) can be found at
http://www.mines.edu/csm_maps/click.shtml

VIA I70 from Denver take SH58 (this follows the Wadsworth, Kipling and Ward exits)
go ~6 miles to Washington St Exit (this is the main street of Golden)
turn left at the light at the end of the ramp
go through down town Golden and up the hill
turn right on 18th St
go 2 blocks to the intersection of 18th and Illinois
visitor parking is on the SW corner of 18 ^th and Illinois
Walk 2 blocks north on Illinois and go right on 16th
Walk 1/2 block and enter the commons on your left
The Green Center will be on your right, go in the first door and Metals Hall is on your right

VIA Rt 6 from Denver turn right on 19th St (this is below the M on the mountain above Golden)
go left at the light that is Illinois St
go 1 block to 18th and Illinois
visitor parking is on the SW corner of 18 ^th and Illinois
(see end of directions above)

VIA Rt 93 from Boulder turn left on 19th St (this is below the M on the mountain above Golden) (see end of directions above)