Land uplift induced by injection: a feasible method to evaluate the security of CO₂ capture and sequestration projects

Technology of CO₂ capture and sequestration (CCS) is one of the many solutions to reduce greenhouse gases and alleviate the current global warming, but its security is important and needs to be evaluated. A simulator which links TOUGHREACT and FLAC^3D was used to simulate the process of coupled temperature-hydrologic-mechanics (THM) in CCS. A test on laboratory scale was set up and water was injected into compacted sand covered by low permeability clay to study the land uplift displacement. The results were used to verify the accuracy of the simulator for calculating the THM coupling. The effects of injection quantity, injection time, and injection mode on land uplift were also studied on the constructed model. At last, a land uplift evaluation system was built to quantify the CO₂ escape if any. The evaluation process can be divided into five steps: model generalization, acquisition of model parameters, numerical modeling, simulation and analysis, monitor comparison, and evaluation of model results. The major output of this study will provide a feasible method for quantitative analysis of CO₂ leakage in CCS projects.