This Work Package will conduct experimental studies and develop simulation models for safe and optimal injection of CO2 or CO2-containing gaseous waste streams into selected depleted gas fields, (saline) aquifers, or coal seams.

The sites will be selected in concert with the participating companies. The work package ‘Reservoir behaviour' focuses on the effects of injecting CO2 or gaseous waste streams containing CO2 with respect to chemistry, geology, physical chemistry, physics and flow through porous media. Short and long term effects on local (near well) and regional scale will be addressed as well as optimal injection schemes.

The focus of the experimental studies will be on coupled of geochemical reactions, mass-transfer and flow of CO2. Experiments will be done using facilities available at the laboratories of the research institutes. The results of the experiments will be built into a multi-phase, multi-component simulation code, like for example UTCHEM, TOUGHREACT or PFLOTRAN for studying the requirements and implications of optimised storage processes for the selected storage sites. If the tools can be applied successfully to the demonstration sites, they can be used for other applications in the Netherlands and abroad, e.g., China.

The proposed experimental work will amongst others cover the following aspects:

• Effects of CO2 injection primarily in sandstone aquifers and secondary in coal seams (i.e. coal swelling and complex diffusion, on ECBM efficiency DSM-Heerlen site)
• Effect of injecting gaseous waste streams containing CO2, NO_X, SO_X etc., on the PVT behaviour in the reservoirs; thereby accounting for presence of gases in the reservoir, formation water, aquifers, electrolytes, chemical reactions and interactions between gas streams and rock texture.
• Geochemical reactions due to CO2 injection; mineralisation; clay precipitation; clathrate formation
• Development of analysis of minerals resulting from mineralization (reactive kinetics and thermodynamic parameters of minerals - pure components and mixtures)
• Investigating environmental impact of mineralisation reactions

Simulators will be improved and used to describe and study:

• The phase behaviour as function of temperature, pressure, composition of gas stream and aquifer, pH, and salinity in porous medium.
• Reactive transport accounting for geochemical mineral reactions upon CO2 injection; benchmarking and improving existing models.
• Dynamic response of the reservoir by considering the output of a number of the other tasks such as thermal, geomechanical, short-term distribution of CO2, mineralisation. Molecular dynamics simulations of clathrates and impurities in CO2 streams