Carbon Storage

The Institute has been working on carbon storage for the past 15 years, exploring the control of CO₂ in subsurface saline aquifers. We have built up considerable expertise on the dynamics of CO₂ plumes moving through layered permeable rocks and on the various mechanics which control the trapping of CO₂ in the subsurface, including structural, capillary and dissolution.

There is a large group of researchers exploring some of the fundamental controls of CO₂ migration and working on interpreting field data from active CO₂ sequestration projects using these models. Ongoing work focuses on the dynamics of CO₂ in heterogeneous and permeable rocks, with direct relevance to several reservoirs presently being explored for carbon storage. (Prof Jerome Neufeld; Prof Andy Woods)

• The use of tracers to monitor CO₂ migration through porous rocks (Hinton and Woods 2018)
• Modelling the seismic reflection associated with a moving CO₂ plume (Cowton et al 2018)
• Modelling the elastic response in a reservoir as CO₂ is injected into a well
• Assessing the storage capacity of CO₂ in porous rocks (Hinton and Woods 2018)
• Modelling the dynamics of CO₂ leakage from subsurface reservoirs (Gilmore et al 2021)
• Storage and dissolution of CO₂ in an anticline