Pore structure evolution of mudstone caprock under cyclic load-unload and its influence on breakthrough pressure

Abstract

The pore structure of caprock plays an important role in underground gas storage security, as it significantly influences the sealing capacity of caprock. However, the pore structure evolution of caprock with the cyclic stress perturbations triggered by the cyclic gas injection or extraction remains unclear. In this study, the pore structure changes of mudstone caprock under cyclic loading and unloading were obtained by the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) tests system, then the influence of the changes on the breakthrough pressure of caprock was discussed. The results indicated that the pore structure changes are depending on the stress loading-unloading path and stress level. In the first cyclic, at the loading stage, with the increase of confining stress, the NMR T₂ spectra curve moved to the left, the NMR signal amplitude of the first peak increased, while the amplitude of the second peak decreased gradually. This indicated that the larger pores of mudstone are compressed and transformed into smaller pores, then the number of macropores decreased and the number of micro- and meso-pores increased. For a certain loading-unloading cycle, the porosity curve of mudstone in the loading process is not coincide with that in the unloading process, the porosity curve in the loading process was located below that in the unloading process, which indicated that the pore structure change is stress path dependent. With the increase of cycle numbers, the total porosity shown an increasing trend, indicating that the damage of mudstone occurred under the cyclic stress load-unload effects. With the increase of porosity, the breakthrough pressure of mudstone decreased with the increase of the cyclic numbers, which may increase the gas leakage risk. The results can provide significant implication for the underground gas storage security evaluation.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

underground gas storage / pore structure / nuclear magnetic resonance / cyclic loading-unloading / breakthrough pressure

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Acknowledgments

This study was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52174107), the Basic Research and Frontier Exploration Projects in Chongqing (No. cstc2021 yszx-jcyjX0010).

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