Enhanced Reservoir Modeling Developed by Berkley Could Speed Up Future of CCS

Nearly all of today's mathematical modelling is done by computers.  Rightly so, no need to be a generation of pencil pushers in this super computing age.  Most people that have any experience with mathematical modelling know, the details involved mean everything.  Plainly, the system inputs highly coincide with the system outputs.  Even more simply, garbage in = garbage out.  Scientists therefore spend an enormous amount of time trying to develop more and more detailed models in order to achieve better results from their model simulations.  Berkley Labs have just recently developed a simulation technique called adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) to combat existing modelling problems.  The Berkley article can be reviewed here.

Called Porous Media AMR, or PMAMR, the code concentrates computing power on more active areas of a simulation by breaking it into finer parts (higher resolution), while calculating less active, less critical portions in coarser parts (lower resolution). The size of the chunks, and thus the resolution, automatically shifts as the model changes, ensuring the most active, critical processes are also the most highly resolved. This ability to automatically shift focus makes AMR a powerful tool for modeling phenomena that start small and grow over time

This statement essentially says that modelling techniques can now focus on smaller "chunks" of modelling data and set more importance upon them.  The areas of high resolution are usually where more important data is being collected and therefore the model should favor those areas of data.  Being that these areas are of high resolution, this means more specific input details can be made about these "chunks" and therefore better output information can be collected.  How does this apply to CCS?

This new modelling technique may have developed a better simulation code to model CO2 injection into underground saline reservoirs!  Saline reservoirs account for the largest potential storage capacity for injected CO2 on the planet.  The new software developed by the Berkeley team was able to provide a much finer grained model than that of a traditional geological simulation code, and was able to generate a 3D model of the C02 in solution over time.  The eventual goal is then to be able to use the physical characteristics of a particular aquifer to predict how much CO2 it can accommodate.

This process stands the potential to help or hurt CCS.  If it can be proven through models that CO2 will stay in the designated aquifers without any leakage occurring, the case for CCS is greatly improved.  However, if the new models show that CO2 has the potential to leak in certain reservoirs, a stronger case against CCS will build.  If the modelling goes in favor of CCS, hopefully this will speed processes to get CCS up for review from a legislative standpoint.