During the first part of today’s seminar, PhD student Ross Shepherd presented some of his recent work on the injection and storage of CO2 into underground aquifers.
Carbon capture and storage will be required as one of many technologies in the global energy transition, and Ross has been studying how to optimise the injection of the CO2 in order to maximise the storage efficiency, while making sure that the aquifer does not become fractured and the CO2 is safely stored underground.
Ross has developed a new quantitative model that shows that a transition from a buoyancy-driven regime to an injection-driven regime occurs when the rate at which the CO2 is pumped underground is increased. This leads to a sharp drop in storage efficiency. Consequently, there is a trade-off between the injection rate and the volume of CO2 that can be stored in an aquifer.
Ross’ work is ongoing under the supervision of professor Woods. In the coming months, we will share more results as they become available.