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Effect of wettability alteration on long-term behavior of fluids in subsurface

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Abstract

Wettability is an important factor affecting fluid behavior in the subsurface, including oil, gas, and supercritical \(\hbox {CO}_2\) in deep geological reservoirs. For example, \(\hbox {CO}_2\) is generally assumed to behave as a non-wetting fluid, which favors safe storage. However, because of chemical heterogeneity of the reservoirs, mixed wettability conditions can exist. Furthermore, recent experiments suggest that with time, the wettability of super-critical \(\hbox {CO}_2\) may change from non-wetting to partially wetting due to changes in electrostatic interactions. These changes are caused by chemical reactions between dissolved \(\hbox {CO}_2\) and its environment. To date, the effect of wettability alteration and mixed wettability on the long-term fate of injected \(\hbox {CO}_2\) has not well been studied. Here, we use the multiphase pairwise force smoothed particle hydrodynamics model to study complex pore-scale processes involved in geological \(\hbox {CO}_2\) sequestration, including the effect of spatial and temporal wettability variations on long-term distribution of \(\hbox {CO}_2\) in porous media. Results reveal that in the absence of dissolution of supercritical \(\hbox {CO}_2\) and precipitation of carbonate minerals (mineral trapping), the amount of trapped supercritical \(\hbox {CO}_2\) significantly decreases as the wettability of the porous media changes from brine-wet to partial-wet or \(\hbox {CO}_2\)-wet.

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Acknowledgments

A.M. Tartakovsky gratefully acknowledges the funding support from the Applied Mathematics Program within the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) as part of the Early Career Award, “New Dimension Reduction Methods and Scalable Algorithms for Multiscale Non-linear Phenomena.” Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is operated by Battelle for the DOE under Contract DE-AC05-76RL01830.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. South Florida Water Management District, West Palm Beach, FL, USA

    Uditha C. Bandara

  2. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA

    Bruce J. Palmer & Alexandre M. Tartakovsky

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  1. Uditha C. Bandara
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  2. Bruce J. Palmer
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Correspondence to Alexandre M. Tartakovsky.

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Bandara, U.C., Palmer, B.J. & Tartakovsky, A.M. Effect of wettability alteration on long-term behavior of fluids in subsurface. Comp. Part. Mech. 3, 277–289 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40571-015-0098-8

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