CO2‑Soluble Nonionic Surfactants for Enhanced CO2 Storage via In Situ Foam Generation

• Published in: Energy & fuels 2023-08, Vol.37 (16), p.12089-12100
• Main Authors: Burrows, Lauren C., Haeri, Foad, Tapriyal, Deepak, Shah, Parth G., Crandall, Dustin, Enick, Robert M., Goodman, Angela
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Contact angle; Environmental and Carbon Dioxide Issues; Foams; INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY; Permeability; Surfactants; Viscosity
• ISSN: 0887-0624; 1520-5029
• DOI: 10.1021/acs.energyfuels.3c01262

Geologic carbon storage (GCS) is a rapidly evolving technology with the potential to reduce the environmental impact of fossil fuel usage. Saline aquifers, which comprise a sandstone matrix with brine contained in the pores, make up much of the pore space available for CO2 storage in the United States. When CO2 is injected in saline aquifers, however, capillary fingering occurs, and only a small percentage of the pore space is filled with CO2. This fingering effect is due to the low viscosity of CO2, which is roughly ten times less viscous than brine. To address this problem, we tested the ability of inexpensive, commercially available nonionic surfactants to be dissolved in injected CO2 and increase the apparent viscosity of CO2 by generating CO2-in-water foams in situ. We focused our study on nonionic tridecyl ethoxylate surfactants with the number of ethoxylate groups ranging from 11 to 18 (TDA-11, TDA-13, TDA-15, TDA-18). These surfactants exhibited sufficient CO2-solubility and were shown to reduce the CO2-brine interfacial tension (IFT), stabilize bulk CO2-in-brine foams, and reduce the mobility of CO2 during core floods of CO2 in brine-saturated Berea sandstone. The surfactants did not alter the wettability of the Berea sandstone. Modeling results showed that in a reservoir field injection scenario, the presence of TDA-11 (0.1 wt %) increased both the CO2 storage resource and storage efficiency by 17%. Simulations also showed that the lateral extension area of the plume was reduced by 23% and that CO2 saturation within the plume increased by 26%.