MGK Guest Lectures

The seminar took place online via Zoom.

Industrial activity is the primary source of carbon emissions with a estimated 78% of total contribution. Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology is one of the alternatives to reduce CO₂ emissions, where the captured CO₂ is transported to the facilities using various storage techniques. Geologic carbon sequestration (GCS) is one such technique, where deep geological subsurface formation is used as permanent storage facility. Based on available geological, petrophysical, and geochemical properties, the Deccan volcanic province is one of India’s largest sinks for geological CO₂ sequestration. Approximately 5,000,000 km² of India is covered with Deccan basalt. The fate of injected CO₂ in the geological formations follow various physical trappings and chemical transformations which are classified as structural, residual, solubility, and mineral trapping mechanisms.

The current research investigates the possible implementation of CO₂ geological sequestration in the Deccan volcanic province. The numerical simulation analysis is carried out to analyse the influences of specific sequestration parameters like the injection rate and injection point; and geological parameters like top surface morphology, petrophysical properties variation, and geological features like stairsteps traps and anticline on the CO₂ plume migration in the subsurface formation domain. The effect of these sequestration and geological parameter variations is analysed on the trapping mechanism, sweeping efficiency and structural integrity over a geological time scale for the considered subsurface synthetic domain. The multiphase, multicomponent reactive transport modelling technique is utilized to conduct this analysis. The outcome of this research has shown insight into the potential implementation of CCS and a future estimate of CO₂ migration and CO₂ entrapment. Further, provide the impacts of sequestration and geological parameters over a geological time scale. Future studies will focus on caprock leakage analysis, leakage implications on different entrapment mechanisms and machine learning approaches to predict the entrapment percentage, leakage, and structural integrity research for long geological time scales.

Keywords: Carbon Capture and Storage, Geologic Carbon Sequestration, Trapping mechanisms, Sequestration parameters, Geological parameters, Reactive transport modelling.