Published March 29, 2023
By Christine Reed
UW School of Energy Resources (SER) Research Scientist Ying Yu in the Center for Economic Geology Research (CEGR) recently published an article in Fuel, a prominent research and technology journal and leading source for fuel science.
The article entitled, “Wettability variation and its impact on CO2 storage capacity at the Wyoming CarbonSAFE storage hub: An experimental approach,” examines the wettability behavior in selected target storage formations to determine if it would affect the formation’s carbon dioxide (CO2) storage capacity.
“Wettability is the ability of a liquid to spread over a surface,” explains Yu. “It can be a very important indicator of how CO2 will behave in the geological storage process when it interacts with the wet rocks and available storage pore space. This helps us to determine the proper injection strategy required to successfully deploy a carbon storage project.”
The study provides critical information for the detailed characterization of geologic storage sites as part of the Wyoming CarbonSAFE project, a commercial-scale carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS) initiative located adjacent to Basin Electric Power Cooperative’s Dry Fork Station in the Powder River Basin. In its third phase of investigation, the project team is working to fully characterize the storage complex to demonstrate storage resources for commercial volumes while reducing any technical risks or uncertainty.
For the study, representative rock samples were selected from the target storage formations— Lakota, Hulett, and Minnelusa—based on the heterogeneity of the lithology, permeability, and porosity of the respective formations.
The results of the experiment allow the recommendation of the best reservoir candidate for storage based on wettability that affects CO2 storage. The work presented in this study provides valuable insights into wettability’s effect on the CO2 storage capacity and wettability’s importance when identifying the optimal CO2 storage formation to meet the project’s goals.
“The researchers on the Wyoming CarbonSAFE project make up a leading team for CCUS research in Wyoming and the nation,” says CEGR Director Fred McLaughlin. “In addition to on-site testing and field work, the experiments being conducted in the lab are not only an important piece of the puzzle for the success of this project, but also for the wide-scale deployment of CCUS technology world-wide.”
By addressing research and development knowledge gaps and developing the technologies needed to nationally deploy CCUS, the Wyoming team hopes to expedite emissions reduction from industrial sources.
“Scholarly articles produced by experts such as Dr. Yu are an invaluable resource to share with other scientists in the field and has defined processes that could provide real increases to a project’s storage capacity,” he adds. “I think her research should be considered for impacts to all CCS projects.”
A petroleum engineer, Yu is a young professional and talented scholar specializing in unconventional reservoir injection technologies. She earned her M.S. and Ph.D. both in petroleum engineering from the University of Wyoming.
