(163a) Geological Labs On Chip for Studying Key Aspects of CO2 Geological Storage

The sustainable management of the CO2 industry is currently a key factor for preventing climate changes due to greenhouse effect. Among the proposed remediation solutions is the deep underground CO2 geological storage. Such storage required adequate scientific knowledge to prevent from unexpected events during injection or final storage. In this context, we develop and use high pressure / high temperature microfluidic tools to study and characterize typical problems related to CO2 trapping in deep saline aquifers. The experimental data could later feed the numerous numerical modeling works done in this field. The fabricated 2D porous networks are created in silicon/Pyrex microsystems to replicate the reservoir conditions and characteristics (25 < T < 50°C, 50 < p < 10 MPa. These are able to mimic the actual storage conditions encountered in real storage reservoirs. Coupled to Raman spectroscopy and optical diagnoses techniques, such microsystems have been confirmed as a fast and accurate way to identify and quantify dissolved carbon dioxide in water and salted water, to study invasion mechanisms depending upon flow rates or wetting properties or to study carbonate precipitation. This technique is proved viable in the laboratory, and can be used to simulate and analyze various CO2 Underground Storage issues.