2013 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Development of stable geological storage technology by using CO2 micro droplets

Research Project

Project/Area Number	24760159
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
Allocation Type	Multi-year Fund
Research Field	Thermal engineering
Research Institution	Tokyo Institute of Technology
Principal Investigator	UEMURA Suguru 東京工業大学, 理工学研究科, 助教 (70515163)
Project Period (FY)	2012-04-01 – 2014-03-31
Keywords	物質輸送 / CO2地中隔離
Research Abstract	CO2 geological sequestration is one of the most feasible methods for substantial reduction of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. Under conditions of temperature and pressure in aquifer, CO2 becomes supercritical state and upward migration of CO2 is caused by the buoyancy force. In order to reduce the leakage risk, injecting nano-scale CO2 droplets into the aquifer is proposed in this study. Nano-scale supercritical CO2 droplets were generated with surfactant and investigated their time evolution of its diameter and the distribution experimentally. At high CO2 density and low temperature condition, stable supercritical CO2 droplets were observed. Supercritical CO2 droplets that were injected into the porous media were observed by using X-ray CT. The CO2 droplets grew at pore-scale, however, were stably trapped in each pore by capillary force.