Evolution of sealing efficiency for CO2 geological storage due to mineral alteration within a hydrogeologically heterogeneous caprock

In CO₂ geological storage (CGS) context, the evolution of the caprock sealing capacity has received increasing attention, particularly on a geological time span (thousands of years). At this time scale, geochemical reactions may enhance or weaken the caprock quality. It is widely recognized that, for the reservoir, geological heterogeneities affect the concentration and spatial distribution of CO₂, and then affect the extent of gas–water–rock interactions, which in turn alters the hydrogeological properties of the reservoir. However, much less attention of these effects has been paid to the caprock. In this study, we presented and applied a novel approach to evaluate the effects of permeability and porosity heterogeneities on the alteration of minerals, the associated evolution of the caprock sealing efficiency and the containment of supercritical CO₂ (scCO₂) within the caprock. Even though this is a generic study, several conditions and parameters such as pressure, permeability, and mineral composition, were extracted from a caprock layer of the Shiqianfeng Formation in the Ordos Basin demonstration site in China. For the sake of simplification, a 2-dimensional model was designed to represent the caprock domain. We firstly generated an appropriate heterogeneous random field of permeability with the average permeability taken from the uppermost mudstone layer of the Shiqianfeng Formation, and then the heterogeneity in porosity was incorporated using a joint normal distribution method based on the available data. Homogeneous mineral compositions of the reservoir and caprock were used in all simulations. Simulations of three cases were performed, including a homogeneous case, a case with only permeability heterogeneity and a case with both permeability and porosity heterogeneities. The results demonstrate dramatic influences of permeability and porosity heterogeneities on the migration of scCO₂ within the caprock, the alteration of minerals, and therefore the evolution of the caprock sealing quality. Specific to the data used in this study, hydrogeological heterogeneities facilitated the overall penetration of scCO₂ within the caprock and promoted the alteration of minerals, thereby weakening the caprock sealing efficiency over the simulation time.