Carbon Dioxide Storage Optimization
The PCOR Partnership, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), aims to foster the development of infrastructure and accelerate deployment of carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) in the northwest quadrant of North America, comprising ten U.S. states and four Canadian provinces. The PCOR Partnership region hosts many notable CCUS investigative and operational projects, and the PCOR Partnership continues to be an important component of a national strategy for cost-effective reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. The growing number of planned and operational CCUS projects, worldwide and within the PCOR Partnership region, attests to the immense amount of prior research conducted to provide a sound foundation for the geologic storage of CO2. However, potential for optimization remains in many saline aquifer CO2 storage subdisciplines, which is the focus of this investigation, with the intent of accelerating widespread CCUS deployment. CO2 storage optimization can be defined in many ways. In this investigation, optimization of field operational techniques and constraints are considered, as well as the resulting impacts and implications for injectivity and potential storage resource, land ownership and pore space leasing, monitoring requirements to satisfy regulatory/permitting guidance, and capital and operational cost expenditures. The goal of this study was to investigate means of storage optimization in a fixed unit area over an assumed time frame to determine the most cost-efficient means of maximizing injectivity and cumulative stored CO2.View/Download Document