Feasibility Analysis of Hypergravity Experiment of Density-Driven Convection of Dissolved CO₂

Abstract

Dissolution trapping is one of the most promising mechanisms for safe geological carbon storage. Density-driven convection substantially accelerates the conversion of free-phase CO₂ to the dissolved state, enhancing the sequestration safety. Since this process occurs on time scales of hundreds to thousands of years, reproducing it through conventional laboratory physical model tests is challenging. The hypergravity experiment reduces the model size and shortens the experimental time, enabling the modeling of gravity-driven flow processes at the field scale. However, it is uncertain whether the preferential flow effect caused by fractures can be reproduced in a hypergravity experiment. In this study, a three-dimensional discrete fracture-matrix model (3D-DFM) was used to evaluate the feasibility of hypergravity experiment of the transport of dissolved CO₂ in fractured reservoirs. Numerical hypergravity tests were performed to examine the feasibility of modeling density-driven convection in homogeneous and heterogeneous media at different centrifuge accelerations. The hypergravity experiment can be used to study density-driven convection of dissolved CO₂ at the field scale in homogeneous system. The numerical results show that the hypergravity experiment enables a faster breakthrough of plume and overestimates CO₂ migration in the matrix surrounding the fractures.

Keywords

carbon sequestration / dissolution trapping / density-driven convection / hypergravity experiment / scaling laws / fracture

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