A workflow for handling heterogeneous 3D models with the TOUGH2 family of codes: Applications to numerical modeling of CO2 geological storage

This paper is addressed to the TOUGH2 user community. It presents a new tool for handling simulations run with the TOUGH2 code with specific application to CO2 geological storage. This tool is composed of separate FORTRAN subroutines (or modules) that can be run independently, using input and output files in ASCII format for TOUGH2. These modules have been developed specifically for modeling of carbon dioxide geological storage and their use with TOUGH2 and the Equation of State module ECO2N, dedicated to CO2-water-salt mixture systems, with TOUGHREACT, which is an adaptation of TOUGH2 with ECO2N and geochemical fluid-rock interactions, and with TOUGH2 and the EOS7C module dedicated to CO2-CH4 gas mixture is described. The objective is to save time for the pre-processing, execution and visualization of complex geometry for geological system representation. The workflow is rapid and user-friendly and future implementation to other TOUGH2 EOS modules for other contexts (e.g. nuclear waste disposal, geothermal production) is straightforward. Three examples are shown for validation: (i) leakage of CO2 up through an abandoned well; (ii) 3D reactive transport modeling of CO2 in a sandy aquifer formation in the Sleipner gas Field, (North Sea, Norway); and (iii) an estimation of enhanced gas recovery technology using CO2 as the injected and stored gas to produce methane in the K12B Gas Field (North Sea, Denmark). (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.