Geochemical Impacts of Carbon Dioxide, Brine, Trace Metal and Organic Leakage into an Unconfined, Oxidizing Limestone Aquifer

An important risk at CO2 storage sites is the potential for groundwater quality impacts. As part of a system to assess the potential for these impacts a geochemical scaling function has been developed, based on a detailed reactive transport model of CO2 and brine leakage into an unconfined, oxidizing carbonate aquifer. Stochastic simulations varying a number of geochemical parameters were used to generate a response surface predicting the volume of aquifer that would be impacted with respect to regulated contaminants. The brine was assumed to contain several trace metals and organic contaminants. Aquifer pH and TDS were influenced by CO2 leakage, while trace metal concentrations were most influenced by the brine concentrations rather than adsorption or desorption on calcite. Organic plume sizes were found to be strongly influenced by biodegradation.