Using 3D Tomography to Understand Fluid-Fluid Interface Evolution in Porous Media for Carbon Sequestration Applications
type: CreativeWork
description: Fundamental understanding of multi-phase flow in porous media is needed to deploy subsurface engineering processes such as geologic carbon sequestration (GCS) that works by injecting and storing carbon dioxide (CO2) into underground geologic formations. In this PhD project, the in-situ fluid configuration was visualized within the opaque porous media with the utilization of X-ray micro-tomographic (MCT) imaging for multiple fluid-fluid-solid systems at physical scale of micrometer. With further image processing, qualitative and quantitative analyses were performed on the acquired MCT data for a total of three sets of experiment. In the first set of experiment, we investigated the representative elementary volume (REV) for a set of fundamental physical parameter measurements such as porosity and specific interfacial area; and topological measures including Betti numbers and the corresponding Euler characteristic that are relevant to fluid connectivity for an air-water-sandstone system under ambient conditions. We aimed to investigate the effect of the saturation level of water and image resolution on the REV of the parameters investigated. We observed that both the saturation level and the image resolution affects the REV of the parameters of interest. Moreover, we conclude that for connectivity results applicable to flow processes in macropores, treatment of microporosity presented mainly in clays is necessary. The second set of experiment aimed to investigate the interphase mass transfer process of supercritical CO2 (scCO2) into brine for a scCO2-brine-sandstone system under experimental conditions relevant to GCS. Throughout the experiment during which brine was injected continuously to dissolve any trapped scCO2 clusters in pore space, time-evolution of the scCO2 clusters were tracked by implementing a cluster-matching workflow. The mass transfer coefficient was then calculated for each completely depleted scCO2 cluster, and were averaged for the entire system as…
abstract: Fundamental understanding of multi-phase flow in porous media is needed to deploy subsurface engineering processes such as geologic carbon sequestration (GCS) that works by injecting and storing carbon dioxide (CO2) into underground geologic formations. In this PhD project, the in-situ fluid configuration was visualized within the opaque porous media with the utilization of X-ray micro-tomographic (MCT) imaging for multiple fluid-fluid-solid systems at physical scale of micrometer. With further image processing, qualitative and quantitative analyses were performed on the acquired MCT data for a total of three sets of experiment. In the first set of experiment, we investigated the representative elementary volume (REV) for a set of fundamental physical parameter measurements such as porosity and specific interfacial area; and topological measures including Betti numbers and the corresponding Euler characteristic that are relevant to fluid connectivity for an air-water-sandstone system under ambient conditions. We aimed to investigate the effect of the saturation level of water and image resolution on the REV of the parameters investigated. We observed that both the saturation level and the image resolution affects the REV of the parameters of interest. Moreover, we conclude that for connectivity results applicable to flow processes in macropores, treatment of microporosity presented mainly in clays is necessary. The second set of experiment aimed to investigate the interphase mass transfer process of supercritical CO2 (scCO2) into brine for a scCO2-brine-sandstone system under experimental conditions relevant to GCS. Throughout the experiment during which brine was injected continuously to dissolve any trapped scCO2 clusters in pore space, time-evolution of the scCO2 clusters were tracked by implementing a cluster-matching workflow. The mass transfer coefficient was then calculated for each completely depleted scCO2 cluster, and were averaged for the entire system as…
author: Huang, Ruotong
language: en_AU
date published: 2025
date modified: 2026-07-24T00:54:41Z
provider: Australian National University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Australian National University

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property ID: Handle
value: https://hdl.handle.net/1885/733736712