Geologic carbon storage (GCS) is important for reducing CO2 emission. The Danish North Sea chalk reservoir is currently being evaluated as a GCS site
CO2-rich water reacts fast with chalk and changes formation properties rapidly. Approaches based on static parameters fail to foresee the dynamics of how injected CO2 will migrate.
The predictive capacity that is essential for ensuring GCS safety is absent because of the information gap regarding how microscopic structural heterogeneities become local determinants of reactive flow over time.
We will develop a novel sample environment for synchrotron-based in situ X-ray tomography. The apparatus will enable direction observation of defect escalation across five orders of magnitude.
This unprecedented capacity will offer fundamental insights into how many geochemical variables factor into the evolution of a complex GCS system. The data will also allow us to validate and calibrate our numerical model and to build up new predictive capacity.