HR: 1340h
AN: H13F-1645    [Abstracts]
TI: Development of a Fully Coupled Multiphase Thermo-Hydro-Mechanical Numerical Model and Its Application to Geological Storage of Carbon Dioxide
AU: * Kim, J
EM: junmokim@snu.ac.kr
AF: Seoul National University, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Seoul, 151-742, Korea, Republic of
AB: A thermo-hydro-mechanical (THM) numerical model is presented to evaluate groundwater and carbon dioxide flow, heat transport, and land deformation in geologic media due to carbon dioxide injection. This multidimensional numerical model is developed on the basis of the fully coupled multiphase thermoporoealstic governing equations for true anisotropic porous and fractured geologic media, the nonlinear constitutive equations, and the Galerkin finite element method. Two different cases of geologic systems are simulated for the purpose of comparison. One is a three-layer aquifer system, which is composed of two sandstone aquifers separated by a cracked shale aquitard as a cap rock, and another is a single-layer aquifer system, which does not have such an aquitard. The numerical simulation results show that the aquitard has significant effects on the spatial distributions and temporal changes of groundwater pressure and saturation, carbon dioxide pressure and saturation, geothermal temperature, and land displacement vector. Such effects of the shale aquitard are caused by its relatively lower hydraulic permeability and thermal conductivity and relatively higher mechanical deformability compared with those of the sandstone aquifers. Therefore it may be concluded that layered heterogeneity cannot always be ignored if it is observed in actual geologic systems, and thus it must be properly characterized and considered when more rigorous and reasonable predictions of long-term thermo-hydro- mechanical responses of the whole geologic systems to carbon dioxide injection are to be obtained. Further numerical studies of various geological and hydrogeological settings and field applications are recommended to arrive at more general conclusions concerning the effects of layered heterogeneity on multiphase fluid flow, heat transport, and land deformation due to carbon dioxide injection.
DE: 1805 Computational hydrology
DE: 1822 Geomechanics
DE: 1829 Groundwater hydrology
DE: 1847 Modeling
DE: 1849 Numerical approximations and analysis
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting