Modelling of CO2 storage in geological formations with DuMux, a free-open-source numerical framework. A possible tool to assess geological storage of carbon dioxide in Romania

Abstract

Geological storage of carbon dioxide represents a viable solution to reduce the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Romania has initiatives to build a large-scale integrated CO2 capture and storage demonstration project and find suitable on-shore and off-shore CO2 storage locations. Numerical simulators are essential tools helping the design process. These simulators are required to be capable to represent the complex thermo-hydro-mechanical-chemical and biological phenomena accompanying the geological CO2 storage such as, multi-phase flow, compositional effects due to dissolution of CO2 into the brine, non-isothermal effects due to cold CO2 injection, geomechanical effects, mineralization at the reservoir-scale. These processes can be simulated accurately and efficiently with DuMux (www.dumux.org), a free- and open-source simulator. This article presents and reviews briefly these mathematical and numerical models.