Environment

[P1-01] Effect of microbubble injection for CO₂ dissolution in long core experiment

○Hyuck PARK¹, Lanlan JIANG¹, Tamotsu KIYAMA¹, Ziqiu XUE¹ (1. Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth)

Keywords:microbubble, supercritical CO2, X-ray CT, Berea sandstone, long core specimen

To study the effect of microbubble injection for CO₂ dissolution, we carried out laboratory experiments of CO₂ flooding in porous sandstone. In this research, we confirm the effect of microbubbling and confirm how long microbubble effect will be continued by using long core sample (Berea sandstone). In this sample, bedding planes parallel to the core axis are developed, and these bedding planes were set to be horizontal. The micro bubble filter was set on the upstream side of the sample so as to be in contact with the sample. The experiments were carried out under the pressure and temperature conditions that simulate underground environments; pore pressure: 1MPa, temperature: 4 degrees Celsius. The confining pressure of 15MPa was selected in this study. Using X-ray CT image analysis, porosity estimation and CO₂ saturation monitoring were conducted. When comparing the CO₂ saturations at breakthrough, a difference of about 5% points is observed between microbubble case and normal bubble case. Particularly, in the process of injecting CO₂ up to about 1.5PV, the microbubble case showed remarkably high CO₂ saturation at the sample center part of 2 to 17 mm. The result of this research reveals that injection of microbubble CO₂ will promote CO₂ dissolution more and we expect it will be a technology that can contribute in the future CCS project.