| To reduce global CO2 emissions, CO2 Capture and Storage (CCS) is considered to be a
potential technology that can play a significant role in achieving this goal. However,
questions regarding the long-term safety of subsurface CO2 storage means that it is met with
opposition.
To ensure safe storage, beyond the timescale of 10 000 years as required by many
regulators, it is important to be able to predict the effect CO2/brine/rock interactions may
have on long-term storage integrity of CCS sites. Understanding their impact on the
mechanical behaviour of the reservoir-caprock system has been a strong focus for many
years. However, the slow reaction rates of many minerals with CO2 and brine means that
laboratory studies can mainly address the chemo-mechanical behaviour on timescales of
several weeks to months.
Natural CO2 analogues offer a unique way to study the long-term chemo-mechanical
behaviour of storage systems, as here CO2 has been present for over thousands of years. This
presentation will give an overview of the current status of research in this area. |