Associate Professor Wei Yan from DTU Chemistry has received funding for further investigation of the feasibility of CO2 storage in certain underground chambers in the North Sea. He is part of the carbon capture and storage consortium called Project Greensand.
One of the most promising and crucial approaches for reducing the vast emission of CO2 in our atmosphere is carbon capture and storage (CCS) and CCS has become an important part of the Government’s climate programme.
Currently, a consortium called Project Greensand is maturing one of the most progressed and ambitious CCS projects inside Danish jurisdiction.
The project targets the development of CO2 storage capacity in the Danish part of the North Sea based on reusing discontinued offshore oil and gas fields for permanent CO2 storage.
After successfully completing initial technical validation studies, Project Greensand recently received 197 MDKK from the Energy Technology Development and Demonstration Program (EUDP) via the Danish Energy Agency for phase 2.
As part of the project and phase 2, Associate Professor Wei Yan from DTU Chemistry has been granted 3.9 MDKK.
“Our involvement is on the reservoir aspect. We will investigate what happens if a huge amount of CO2 is injected into the underground storage site currently filled with brine and residual oil”, he says.
The contribution from the research team at DTU Chemistry is two-fold: First, they will measure fundamental thermophysical properties critical to the simulation of the multiphase flow involving CO2, brine, and oil. Secondly, they will investigate specifically salt precipitation during injection of the large amount of CO2.
“Our experimental and simulation study will reduce the risk of the injectivity impairment due to salt precipitation”, he says.
According to Project Greensand the plan is to start injecting CO2 into the reservoirs in 2025.