Measuring and modeling of Ostwald Ripening in Residually Trapped CO2

Despite its major influence on storage capacity, CO2 plume migration rate, and rates of CO2 dissolution and mineralization, residual trapping remains perhaps the least understood of the trapping mechanisms following CO2 injection in geologic formations. Whereas conventional multi-phase flow models assume that the residually trapped non-wetting phase is permanently immobilized, multiple physiochemical mechanisms exist which could potentially invalidate this assumption. One mechanism is CO2 transfer driven by differences in capillary pressure between disconnected neighbor ganglia, called Ostwald Ripening.

Speaker: Charlotte Garing, Stanford