CTC-CNE

Main contributors: Yousef Ghomian15, Nicolas Ruby

A diverse team of technical contributors from both the Chevron Technical Center (CTC) and Chevron New Energies (CNE), was assembled to address the three challenges presented by the SPE11 project. The team utilized a thermal-compositional simulation modeling approach with INTERSECTTM (IX 2023.4). Petrel was employed to construct the static grid, incorporating the provided geometry, heterogeneity, thermal capacities/conductivities, and boundary conditions.

A single-component (CO2) equation of state model was tuned to match pure gas phase properties derived from NIST’s chemistry webbook, along with the Crookston correlation for phase partitioning. Pressure and temperature-dependent k-value tables were used to determine component solubility in brine, utilizing in-house tools and data, in addition to Ezrokhi correlations for mixture density and viscosity calculations. For component enthalpy calculations, NIST data was extracted and tabulated at the given ranges of pressure and temperature.

All three challenges were successfully simulated, with the team conducting additional sensitivities beyond the project's scope in results not submitted. This included convective mixing, a major focus of this study. This phenomenon was specifically amplified by both CO2 dissolution and density differences due to the temperature contrast between the injected CO2 and aquifer brine.

Acknowledgements

People

Additional contributions to the CTC-CNE SPE11 submissions by: Ian Benson, Choongyong Han, Ichiro Osako, Qiang Xu, all from Chevron Technical Center, Matthew Flett, from Chevron Australia.