Bello Ayomikun, Dorhjie Desmond Batsa, Ivanova Anastasia, Cheremisin Alexey
Center for Petroleum Science and Engineering, Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, Skolkovo Innovation Center, 11 Sikorski Street, Moscow, Russia, 143026.
Sci Rep. 2024 Sep 4;14(1):20585. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-70122-1.
Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS) offers a viable solution to reduce the carbon footprint in the petroleum industry, and foam injection presents a promising method to achieve this while simultaneously increasing oil recovery. In this work, we studied the feasibility of CO foam for co-optimizing enhanced oil recovery and CO storage in a high-salinity carbonate formation. The simulated hydrodynamic model is a depleted formation containing 30% residual oil, with three mechanisms for CO storage: solubility, residual, and mineralization trapping mechanisms. The results showed that after 20 years, oil recovery during foam injection was 2.7 times higher than CO injection, and the CO stored during foam flooding was 38% higher than CO injection. Notably, foam injection also increased CO storage capacity by 2.6 times, indicating the potential to store around 2 gigatons of CO in the simulated model. This was attributed to the ability of foam to significantly reduce gas mobility and thus form isolated bubbles through its Jamin effect. Residual trapping was the dominant trapping mechanism, contributing to over 70% of the total CO trapped, attributed to the reduction in the dissolution of CO in brine due to the high salinity of the aqueous medium. CO mineralization was also studied, showing the least trapping efficiency and the dissolution trend of all the carbonate minerals. This study illustrates a novel CO utilization and storage technique in which CO is concurrently sequestered while enhancing oil recovery in a depleted oil reservoir by injecting CO as foam. The relevance of this study lies in its potential to provide a dual benefit of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and boosting oil production, offering a sustainable approach for the petroleum industry.
碳捕获、利用与封存（CCUS）为减少石油行业的碳足迹提供了一个可行的解决方案，而注入泡沫是实现这一目标的一种有前景的方法，同时还能提高石油采收率。在这项工作中，我们研究了二氧化碳泡沫在高盐度碳酸盐岩地层中协同优化提高石油采收率和二氧化碳封存的可行性。模拟的水动力模型是一个含有30%残余油的枯竭地层，有三种二氧化碳封存机制：溶解、残余和矿化捕集机制。结果表明，20年后，注入泡沫期间的石油采收率比注入二氧化碳时高2.7倍，泡沫驱期间封存的二氧化碳比注入二氧化碳时高38%。值得注意的是，注入泡沫还使二氧化碳封存能力提高了2.6倍，这表明在模拟模型中有可能封存约20亿吨二氧化碳。这归因于泡沫能够显著降低气体流动性，从而通过贾敏效应形成孤立的气泡。残余捕集是主要的捕集机制，占总捕获二氧化碳的70%以上，这归因于由于水相介质的高盐度，二氧化碳在盐水中的溶解度降低。还研究了二氧化碳矿化，结果表明其捕集效率最低，且所有碳酸盐矿物都有溶解趋势。本研究说明了一种新型的二氧化碳利用和封存技术，即在枯竭油藏中通过注入泡沫状二氧化碳同时进行二氧化碳封存并提高石油采收率。这项研究的意义在于它有可能带来减少温室气体排放和提高石油产量的双重好处，为石油行业提供了一种可持续的方法。
