Search

• Two dedicated field experiments carried to quantify the CO 2 residual trapping in-situ at 1.6 km depth. • The experimental procedures and results of these experiments are presented. • Hydraulic withdrawal test as a characterization method was robust and gave a clear signal. • Tracer experiments can give more detailed information of CO 2 residual distribution but are more complicated to carry out. Two dedicated field experiments have been carried out at the Heletz, Israel pilot CO 2 injection site. The objective has been to quantify the CO 2 residual trapping in-situ, based on two distinctly different methods. Both experiments are based on the principle of a combination of hydraulic, thermal and/or tracer tests before and after creating the residually trapped zone of CO 2 and using the difference in the responses of these tests to estimate the in-situ residual trapping. In Residual Trapping Experiment I (RTE I), carried out in autumn 2016, the main characterization test before and after the creation of the residually trapped zone were hydraulic withdrawal tests. In this experiment, the residually trapped zone was also created by fluid withdrawal, by first injecting CO 2 , then withdrawing fluids until CO 2 was at residual saturation. The second experiment, Residual Trapping Experiment II (RTE II), was carried out autumn 2017. In this experiment, the residually trapped CO 2 zone was created by CO 2 injection, followed by the injection of CO 2 -saturated water, to push away the mobile CO 2 and leave the residually trapped CO 2 behind. In this test, the main reference test carried out before and after creating the residually trapped zone was injection and recovery of gas partitioning tracer Krypton. This paper presents the experimental procedures and results of these experiments. A hydraulic withdrawal test as a characterization method was robust and gave a clear signal. Given the difficulties in injecting water optimally saturated with CO 2 , in order not to dissolve the residually trapped CO 2 or to create situations with excess mobile gas, withdrawal test may also be a generally preferable hydraulic testing method, in comparison to injection. The limitation of any hydraulic test is that it only gives an averaged value over the test section. At Heletz additional information about CO 2 distribution was obtained based on thermal measurements and by monitoring the pressure difference between the two sensors in the bolehole. The latter could be used to estimate the amount of mobile CO 2 in the well test section. Tracer experiments with gas partitioning tracers can in principle give more detailed information of CO 2 residual distribution in the reservoir than hydraulic tests can, but are also far more complicated to carry out, involving sophisticated and sensitive equipment. In the Heletz case the optimal injection of CO 2 -saturated water turned out to be difficult to achieve. Creating the zone of residual saturation by means of fluid withdrawal rather than by injecting CO 2 -saturated water seemed a more robust approach. Monitoring the gas contents in the test interval gave good guidance on the state of the system. Model interpretations of the two experiments to obtain values for CO2 residual saturation are presented in companion papers in this same Special Edition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Diffusion parameters for HTO, 36Cl− , and 125I− were determined on Upper Toarcian argillite samples from the Tournemire Underground Research Laboratory (Aveyron, France) using the through diffusion technique. The direction of diffusion was parallel to the bedding plane. The purpose of the present study was 3-fold; it was intended (i) to confirm the I− interaction with Upper Toarcian argillite and to verify the effects of initial I− concentration on this affinity, as previously observed by means of radial diffusion experiments, (ii) to highlight any discrepancy between Cl− and I− diffusivity, and (iii) to investigate the effect of an increase of the ionic strength of the solution on the anionic tracers’ diffusive behaviour. The results show that the effective diffusion coefficient (De ) and diffusion accessible porosity (εa ) values obtained with an ionic strength (I.S.) synthetic pore water of 0.01eqL−1 are: De =2.35–2.50×10−11 m2 s−1 and εa =12.0–15.0% for HTO, and De =14.5–15.5×10−13 m2 s−1 and εa =2.5–2.9% for 36Cl−. Because of anionic exclusion effects, anions diffuse slower and exhibit smaller diffusion accessible porosities than HTO, taken as a water tracer. The associated effective diffusion coefficient (De ) and rock capacity factor (α) obtained for 125I are: De =7.00–8.60×10−13 m2 s−1 and α =4.3–7.2%. Such values make it possible to calculate low 125I distribution ratios (0.0057< RD <0.0192mLg−1) which confirm the trend indicating that the 125I rock capacity factor increases with the decrease of the initial I− concentration. Additional through-diffusion experiments were carried out with a higher ionic strength synthetic pore water (I.S.=0.11eqL−1). No evolution of HTO diffusion parameters was observed. The anionic tracers’ effective diffusion coefficient increased by a factor of two but no clear evolution of their accessible porosity was observed. Such a paradox could be related to the particularly small mean pore size of the Upper Toarcian argillite of Tournemire. The most significant finding of this study is the large discrepancy (factor of two) between the values of the effective diffusion coefficient for 125I and 36Cl. Whatever the ionic strength of the synthetic solution used, 125I exhibited De values two times lower than those of 36Cl. A detailed explanation for this difference cannot be given at present even if a hypothesis based on ion-pairing or on steric-exclusion cannot be excluded. This makes questionable the assumption usually made for quantifying 125I sorption and postulating that 36Cl and 125I would diffuse in the same porosity. In other terms, at Tournemire, 125I sorption could be more pronounced than previously indicated. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: GenMolTM code is used to simulate Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) tests at a kaolinite/brine/kaolinite contact, the confined fluid in sub-nanometre interspaces being in equilibrium with an external multi-species solution. The attraction/repulsion effort, i.e. the derivative versus the interspace aperture h of the interaction energy between both kaolinite faces, is computed versus the variable composition of the confined fluid (see for the method Part I of this work). Two external solutions are tested. Solution S1 is a neutral brine (pH=7.5) leading to a possible attraction for apertures lower than 7Å. Solution S2 is an acidified brine (pH=3.2) leading to repulsion whatever may be the aperture h. These two AFM simulations prove the existence of a critical pH value (3.2

Diffusion in natural and engineered media is quantified in terms of stochastic models for the heterogeneity-induced fluctuations of particle motion. However, fundamental properties such as ergodicity and self-averaging and their dependence on the disorder distribution are often not known. Here, we investigate these questions for diffusion in quenched disordered media characterized by spatially varying retardation properties, which account for particle retention due to physical or chemical interactions with the medium. We link self-averaging and ergodicity to the disorder sampling efficiency R&#95;{n}, which quantifies the number of disorder realizations a noise ensemble may sample in a single disorder realization. Diffusion for disorder scenarios characterized by a finite mean transition time is ergodic and self-averaging for any dimension. The strength of the sample to sample fluctuations decreases with increasing spatial dimension. For an infinite mean transition time, particle motion is weakly ergodicity breaking in any dimension because single particles cannot sample the heterogeneity spectrum in finite time. However, even though the noise ensemble is not representative of the single-particle time statistics, subdiffusive motion in q≥2 dimensions is self-averaging, which means that the noise ensemble in a single realization samples a representative part of the heterogeneity spectrum.

We study the self-averaging properties and ergodicity of the mean square displacement m(t) of particles diffusing in d dimensional quenched random environments which give rise to subdiffusive average motion. These properties are investigated in terms of the sample to sample fluctuations as measured by the variance of m(t). We find that m(t) is not self-averaging for d<2 due to the inefficient disorder sampling by random motion in a single realization. For d≥2 in contrast, the efficient sampling of heterogeneity by the space random walk renders m(t) self-averaging and thus ergodic. This is remarkable because the average particle motion in d>2 obeys a CTRW, which by itself displays weak ergodicity breaking. This paradox is resolved by the observation that the CTRW as an average model does not reflect the disorder sampling by random motion in a single medium realization.

In aquifers subject to saline water intrusion, the mixing zone between freshwater and saltwater displays strong physico-chemical gradients. Although the microbial component of these specific environments has been largely disregarded, the contribution of micro-organisms to biogeochemical reactions impacting water geochemistry has previously been conjectured. The objective of this study was to characterize and compare bacterial community diversity and composition along a vertical saline gradient in a carbonate coastal aquifer using high throughput sequencing of 16S rRNA genes. At different depths of the mixing zone, stable geochemical and hydrological conditions were associated with autochthonous bacterial communities harboring clearly distinct structures. Diversity pattern did not follow the salinity gradient, although multivariate analysis indicated that salinity was one of the major drivers of bacterial community composition, with organic carbon, pH and CO2 partial pressure. Correlation analyses between the relative abundance of bacterial taxa and geochemical parameters suggested that rare taxa may contribute to biogeochemical processes taking place at the interface between freshwater and saltwater. Bacterial respiration or alternative metabolisms such as sulfide oxidation or organic acids production may be responsible for the acidification and the resulting induced calcite dissolution observed at a specific depth of the mixing zone., (© 2014 Federation of European Microbiological Societies. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Numerical programs for simulating flow and reactive transport in porous media are essential tools for predicting reservoir properties changes triggered by CO(2) underground injection. At reservoir scale, meshed models in which equations are solved assuming that constant macroscopic properties can be defined in each cells, are widely used. However, the parameterization of the dissolution-precipitation problem and of the feedback effects of these processes on the flow field is still challenging. The problem arises from the mismatch between the scales at which averaged parameters are defined in the meshed model and the scale at which chemical reactions occur and modify the pore network geometry. In this paper we investigate the links between the dissolution mechanisms that control the porosity changes and the related changes of the reactive surface area and of the permeability. First, the reactive surface area is computed from X-ray microtomography data obtained before and after a set of dissolution experiments of pure calcite rock samples using distinctly different brine-CO(2) mixtures characterizing homogeneous to heterogeneous dissolution regimes. The results are used to validate the power law empirical model relating the reactive surface area to porosity proposed by Luquot and Gouze (2009). Second, we investigate the spatial distribution of the effective hydraulic radius and of the tortuosity, two structural parameters that control permeability, in order to explain the different porosity-permeability relationships observed for heterogeneous and homogeneous dissolution regimes. It is shown that the increase of permeability is due to the decrease of the tortuosity for homogeneous dissolution, whereas it is due to the combination of tortuosity decrease and hydraulic radius increase for heterogeneous dissolution. For the intermediate dissolution regime, identified to be the optimal regime for increasing permeability with small changes in porosity, the increase of permeability results from a large increase in the mean effective hydraulic radius of the sample., (Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

The correct characterization of the effective reactive transport dynamics is an important issue for modeling reactive transport on the Darcy scale, specifically in situations in which reactions are localized, that is when different reactions occur in different portions of the porous medium. Under such conditions the conventional approach of homogenizing only the porous medium chemistry is not appropriate. We consider here reactive transport in a porous medium that is characterized by mass transfer between a mobile and a distribution of immobile regions. Chemical and physical heterogeneities are reflected by distributions of kinetic reaction rate constants and residence times in the immobile zones. We derive an effective reactive transport equation for the mobile solute that is characterized by non-local physical mass transfer and reaction terms. Specifically, chemical heterogeneity is upscaled in terms of a reactive memory function that integrates both chemical and physical heterogeneity. Mass transfer limitations due to physical heterogeneity yield effective kinetic rate coefficients that can be much smaller than the volumetric average of the local scale coefficients. These results help to explain and quantify the often reported discrepancy between observed field reaction rate constants and the ones obtained under well mixed laboratory conditions. Furthermore, these results indicate that transport under physical and chemical heterogeneity cannot be upscaled separately., (Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

In most cases, analysis and modeling of flow and transport dynamics in ground water systems require long-term, high-quality, and multisource data sets. This paper discusses the structure of a multisite database (the H+ database) developed within the scope of the ERO program (French Environmental Research Observatory, http://www.ore.fr). The database provides an interface between field experimentalists and modelers, which can be used on a daily basis. The database structure enables the storage of a large number of data and data types collected from a given site or multiple-site network. The database is well suited to the integration, backup, and retrieval of data for flow and transport modeling in heterogeneous aquifers. It relies on the definition of standards and uses a templated structure, such that any type of geolocalized data obtained from wells, hydrological stations, and meteorological stations can be handled. New types of platforms other than wells, hydrological stations, and meteorological stations, and new types of experiments and/or parameters could easily be added without modifying the database structure. Thus, we propose that the database structure could be used as a template for designing databases for complex sites. An example application is the H+ database, which gathers data collected from a network of hydrogeological sites associated with the French Environmental Research Observatory.