Name:              Christian Ihrig (ESSReS PhD student)
Institute:           Jacobs University, Bremen
Department:     Geosciences
Phone:             +49-(0)421-200 3257
Email:               c.ihrig@jacobs-university.de
Web link:          http://www.jacobs-university.de/ , http://wwwback.jacobs-university.de/directory/15264/

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) has shown to be one of the most promising tools in the portfolio of CO2 mitigation strategies, reducing the risk of climate change.

One of the main issues of CO2 storage projects in geological formations is to make sure that CO2 is safely contained below the surface, i.e., it is kept within a reservoir by different trapping mechanisms. However, if CCS is to become industrial standard, large amounts of CO2 have to be injected on a basin scale forcing changes in the regional pressure regime due to the quasi incompressibility of the formation water. This may lead to brine migration far beyond the local storage area where it may affect upper groundwater reservoirs. Furthermore, the moving pressure front might lead to the reactivation of faults causing potential migration pathways for brine or injected CO2.

In this context, we would like to study the pressure evolution on a basin scale and run possible leakage scenarios of CO2 or brine to investigate the impact of leakage and pressure in multilayered systems. As an example we will refer to the Northern German Basin. For this modeling study we will use and modify the petroleum systems modeling software PetroMod 11 (Schlumberger).

 

Start of doctoral thesis: 01 October 2008

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. V. Unnithan (Jacobs University)
Co-Supervisor: Prof. Dr. L. Thomsen (Jacobs University)

Further Members: Prof. Dr. G. Gust (Technische Universtät, Hamburg-Harburg)

                             PD. Dr. M. Kuehn (Geoforschungszentrum Potsdam)

Christian Ihrig and Vikram Unnithan: "Leakage and pressure evolution in large scale CO2-storage scenarios - an experimental and numerical simulation approach", "CO2 geological storage: latest progress", 22 to 27 November 2009, organized by the European Science Foundation and CO2Geonet, Obergurgl, 2009. (PDF)

Helgoland, reservoir rock description, April 2010