Basic Research Needs for Geosciences - Energetics Meetings and ...

PRIORITY RESEARCH DIRECTION:FLUID-INDUCED ROCK DEFORMATIONrepresenting and modeling explicitly coupled geomechanical, hydrological, and geochemicalprocesses will facilitate fully constrained long-term predictions of the energy and massredistribution catalyzed by commercial-scale CO 2 injection. All of the above will help spawndevelopment of new theoretical constructs for understanding shallow crustal deformation,multiphase flow regimes, and geochemical alteration triggered by subsurface perturbation events.TECHNOLOGY IMPACTSA fundamental challenge of geologic CO 2 storage is to accurately forecast the injection-inducedpressure, hydrologic and chemical perturbations, interdependent stress-strain, multiphase flow,and mass transfer responses, respectively, of the reservoir/cap rock/wellbore system. Advancedcapabilities that permit such forecasting are needed to optimize injection strategies, to predictlong-term CO 2 storage capacity, spatial distribution, phase partitioning, and reservoircontainment, and to design effective monitoring programs for verifying anticipated isolationperformance.Integrated laboratory, field, and modeling studies will directly impact technical programs incarbon capture and geologic storage by providing next-generation predictive capabilities. Suchforecasting tools can be used to optimize deployment strategies and reservoir management, topredict long-term cap-rock/well-bore permeability evolution (reservoir containment) due tocoupled mechanical deformation and chemical mass transfer processes, and to design effectivemonitoring programs (geophysical imaging and geochemical sampling techniques, locations,frequencies) for isolation performance verification.Advanced computational models based on integrated geological process understanding can beused to predict injection-induced changes in basin-scale hydrology, as well as to develop newinputs, constraints and methodologies for hazard and risk evaluation (induced seismicity, fracturefailure, leakage, and subsidence). Finally, simulation tools are directly applicable to manygeoscience and engineering disciplines beyond geologic CO 2 storage, such as the behavior offault zones, the generation of earthquakes, and other aspects of shallow crustal deformation dueto both natural geologic processes and engineered modifications to subsurface hydrology andstructure.Basic Research Needs for Geosciences: Facilitating 21 st Century Energy Systems 143