HR: 08:30h
AN: H11J-03    [Abstracts]
TI: Fluid Mechanical Modelling of Carbon Dioxide Sequestration
AU: * Huppert, H E
EM: heh1@esc.cam.ac.uk
AF: ITG, DAMTP, University of Cambridge, CMS, Wilberforce Road, Cambridge, CB3 0WA, United Kingdom
AB: The flow of supercritical carbon dioxide against an impermeable caprock will be considered from a theoretical and experimental point of view. A series of fundamental problems will be presented, along with some laboratory simulations. It will be shown that in the simplest case, when the caprock is totally impermeable and horizontal, with viscosity differences between the supercritical carbon dioxide and the fluid into which it is intruding neglected, the radius of the spreading of carbon dioxide increases like the square root of time. We will then consider the influence of a sloping caprock, where for time short compared to some critical time, τ_c, the spreading pool is close to axisymmetric, while for times very much greater than τ_c it is approximately three times larger in the upslope than cross-slope direction. For typical geological conditions, τ_c can vary from between days and years, and hence the observed shape will depend on details at the injection site. A discussion of the effects of different viscosities of the intruding and intruded fluid will be presented and the important non- dimensional physical parameters outlined. The talk will conclude with a discussion of very recent research on the effects of heterogeneous porosity in the ambient and an application of the results to the analysis of the observations at Sleipner. The talk will be illustrated by colour movie sequences of experiments and a real desk- top experiment.
UR: http://www.itg.cam.ac.uk/people/heh/index.html
DE: 1834 Human impacts
DE: 1847 Modeling
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting