Andreas Busch

Heriot-Watt University · Lyell Centre

Accurately predicting methane adsorption capacity in coal is crucial for assessing coalbed methane resources and ensuring safe extraction. Conventional methane isotherm adsorption experiments often suffer from human error and experimental artefacts, leading to inaccurate and poorly reproducible outcomes. Furthermore, they are time-consuming to cond...

The Malay Basin has received significant attention for geological carbon dioxide storage (GCS), but there are no published studies addressing the selection of appropriate deep saline aquifers. This study closes this gap. We process spatial data and use geological modelling and cluster analysis to identify optimal areas for GCS, considering various...

The geochemical alteration of host rocks might affect the productivity and the potential for induced seismicity of geothermal systems. In addition to natural alteration, following production and heat extraction, re‐injected fluids at lower temperatures and different pressures may be in chemical disequilibrium with the rock, impacting mineral solubi...

The development of hydrocarbon (HC) fields with high CO2 content requires Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) due to the prohibition of CO2 venting in Malaysia. Mitigating CO2 emissions is also important for addressing climate change concerns. There are several potential offshore storage sites in offshore Peninsular Malaysia (PM), such as depleted fie...

Determining the (in)efficiency of wetting phase displacement by an invading non-wetting phase (drainage) in a single fracture is key to modelling upscaled properties such as relative permeability and capillary pressure. These constitutive relationships are fundamental to quantifying the contribution, or lack thereof, of conductive fracture systems...

The Malay Basin is a mature hydrocarbon province currently being re‐assessed for CO 2 storage. Selecting an appropriate storage site requires a comprehensive understanding of the structural and stratigraphic history of the basin. However, previous studies have been limited to observations from either regional 2D seismic lines or individual 3D seism...

To assess the feasibility of mudrocks as a host rock for radioactive waste disposal, the pore structure needs to be characterised in detail. We here quantitatively analysed the pore structure on 13 sets of mudrocks from across the globe at a broad pore scale range (~ 2 nm to ~ 5 μm) using small angle neutron scattering (SANS). These >70 individual...

Hydrogen is an energy carrier that can balance the divergent variations in seasonal energy demand and energy supply from renewables. Underground hydrogen storage in porous formations, such as depleted gas sandstone reservoirs or saline aquifers, provides the capacities needed for large-scale, long-duration energy balancing. This paper reports on th...

Subsurface porous rocks hold significant hydrogen (H2) storage potential to support an H2-based energy future. Understanding H2 flow and trapping in subsurface rocks is crucial to reliably evaluate their storage efficiency. In this work, we perform cyclic H2 flow visualization experiments on a layered rock sample with varying pore and throat sizes....

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) provides a viable option to reduce CO 2 emissions into the atmosphere. In CCS, CO 2 is planned to be safely stored in suitable subsurface formations, providing sufficient storage capacity and sealing integrity. Analysing caprock properties like porosity and permeability is important in ensuring long-term CO 2 contai...

Geochemical alteration of host rocks might affect the productivity and the potential for induced seismicity of geothermal systems. In addition to natural alteration, following production and heat extraction, re-injected fluids at lower temperatures and different pressures may be in chemical disequilibrium with the rock, impacting mineral solubility...

The Malay Basin is a mature hydrocarbon province that is being re-assessed for CO2 storage. Selecting appropriate storage sites requires a comprehensive understanding of the structural and stratigraphic history of the basin, but previous studies of the basin have been limited to observations from either regional, 2D seismic lines or individual 3D s...

This article discusses the impact of small-scale heterogeneity on pore-scale trapping and displacement of hydrogen in rocks for underground hydrogen storage.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) requires sealing caprocks to ensure the stored CO2 is contained in the reservoir and not leaking towards the surface. Many caprocks are composed of mudrocks, a siliciclastic sedimentary rock with a high clay content. We here analyse such a caprock from the Field S which is a potential CO2 storage site in the Sarawak...

The scientific analysis and interpretation of coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical-chemical (THMC) processes in rocks requires complex and diverse instrumentation. In this study, we introduce the “Harpers THMC Flow Bench,” a multi-cell, flow-through reactor system that allows long-term testing on rock plugs and powdered samples. The setup consists of fo...

The long-term interaction of CO2-charged fluids with low permeability cap rocks is important for seal integrity assessment. To address this potential risk, we studied long-term geomechanical changes in a reservoir seal due to fluid-rock interactions with CO2-charged fluids, focusing on a natural CO2 analogue near Green River, Utah, USA. The observe...

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) provides a safe option to reduce carbon footprint on a large scale. Here, carbon dioxide (CO2) is stored in a reservoir formation, overlain by a seal with low permeability and high capillary entry pressure. Understanding CO2 migration through the seal is one of the main components to assess caprock integrity, thereb...

Understanding CO2 migration through the reservoir seal is one of the main challenges in assessing caprock integrity, thereby ensuring safe and long-term CO2 containment and storage. The determination of seal rock properties using core sample analysis or well data is important to predict matrix migration of CO2 to minimise the risk of capillary leak...

Carbon Capture and Storage is not only highly recommended by the IPCC as a mechanism to significantly lower carbon emissions to the atmosphere, it is now also gaining traction in terms of large-scale implementation. Its importance is increasing in many parts of the world to directly decrease emissions from industrial sources, but also to lower the...

The role of organic matter in mudrocks is crucial because it determines diagenetic processes and petrophysical properties like permeability, porosity, and pore size distribution. The exact role is difficult to determine because it is impossible to characterise the same sample with and without organic matter, including their geological history. We t...

Petroleum resource development generates a legacy of energy wells that must be decommissioned effectively as we transition towards NetZero. Unfortunately, some decommissioned wells (DWs) can suffer integrity failure resulting in release of fugitive natural gas into the surrounding soils and atmosphere. After decommissioning there are typically no o...

Hypothesis Underground hydrogen (H2) storage is a potentially viable solution for large-scale cyclic H2 storage; however, the behavior of H2 at subsurface pressure and temperature conditions is poorly known. This work investigates if the pore-scale displacement processes in H2-brine systems in a porous sandstone can be sufficiently well defined to...

The global commitment to achieve net-zero has led to increasing investment towards the production and usage of green hydrogen (H2).However, the massive quantity needed to match future demand will require new storage facilities. Underground storage of H2 is a potentially viable solution, but poses unique challenges due to the distinctive physical an...

As part of the European ACT-sponsored research consortium, DETECT, we developed an integrated characterisation and risk assessment toolkit for natural fault/fracture pathways. In this paper, we describe the DETECT experimental-modelling workflow, which aims to be predictive for fault-related leakage quantification, and its application to a field ca...

The adsorption of water vapor in silica nanopores with different pore morphologies and surface hydrophilicities was studied to quantify the densities and thicknesses of the water sorption layers and deduce their molecular structures. Water adsorption to surface hydroxyls is described by a multilayer sorption model. At low pressure, the water adsorp...

Flow in fractures is sensitive to their geometrical surface characteristics. The surface can undergo deformation if there is a change in stress. Natural fractures have complex geometries and rough surfaces which complicates the modelling of deformation and fluid flow. In this paper, we present a computational model that takes a digital image of a r...

In geoenergy applications, mudrocks prevent fluids to leak from temporary (H 2 , CH 4 ) or permanent (CO 2 , radioactive waste) storage/disposal sites and serve as a source and reservoir for unconventional oil and gas. Understanding transport properties integrated with dominant fluid flow mechanisms in mudrocks is essential to better predict the pe...

Rock fractures provide dominant fluid flow pathways in the Earth’s subsurface and can play an integral role in many subsurface engineering applications, such as the storage of anthropogenic carbon emissions or energy. Injection of an additional fluid into an already saturated fracture, for example, CO2 displacing brine, induces multiphase flow. The...

Heterogeneous fracture aperture distribution, dictated by surface roughness, mechanical rock and fracture properties, and effective stress, limits the predictive capabilities of many reservoir‐scale models that commonly assume smooth fracture walls. Numerous experimental studies have probed key hydromechanical responses in single fractures; however...

The development of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling techniques has promoted the exploitation of shale gas resources. However, using water has several potential drawbacks including environmental issues, e.g., the contamination of groundwater, surface water, and soil, and poor hydrocarbon recovery. Supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO2), w...

MATSAS is a script-based MATLAB program for analysis of X-ray and neutron small-angle scattering (SAS) data obtained from various facilities. The program has primarily been developed for sedimentary rock samples but is equally applicable to other porous media. MATSAS imports raw SAS data from .xls(x) or .csv files, combines small-angle and very sma...

The formation of carbonate spherulites, recognized as part of the South-Atlantic Pre-Salt reservoir rocks, remains enigmatic. Well-chosen analogues provide insights into depositional and diagenetic conditions and the biotic versus abiotic processes that might influence or even control spherulite growth. Radial fibrous calcite spherulites of the Bat...

Geological sequestration of CO2 requires the presence of at least one competent seal above the storage reservoir to ensure containment of the stored CO2. Most of the considered storage sites are overlain by low-permeability evaporites or mudrocks that form competent seals in the absence of defects. Potential defects are formed by man-made well pene...

We present stress-sensitive permeability relationships for two-dimensional fracture networks in the Opalinus Clay from the Mont Terri underground rock laboratory. These relationships may be used as a proxy for fracture network permeability in numerical models that resolve large spatial scales and are used in a variety of GeoEnergy applications invo...

To verify successful long-term CO2 storage, it is critical to improve our understanding of leakage along natural faults and fractures within the primary caprock. In the proximity of a fault zone, interactions between multiple fracture sets can create complex networks which can play a fundamental role in fluid transport properties within the rock ma...

Low-permeability geological seals may be compromised by the occurrence of fluid-conductive fault and fracture systems, which can potentially transmit fluids away from the storage reservoir. We performed a systematic laboratory-based investigation into the effect of surface roughness on the fluid flow properties of both natural rock and 3D-printed f...

Carbonate rock is a potential host for carbon dioxide storage. It is likely to react with carbonated water, following CO2 dissolution and dissociation in formation fluids. This might lead to carbonate dissolution or precipitation, depending on pH and formation fluid composition. In case of dissolution, the formation gets mechanically weaker, which...

Effective storage and containment of injected fluids, over a range of spatial and temporal scales, is reliant upon the sealing capacity of the lithologies overlying geological stores. Low-permeability mudrocks are considered effective candidates to restrict the migration of injected fluids from the host formation, owing to their low matrix permeabi...

Mudrocks feature geological and geotechnical applications such as unconventional resources of fossil fuels, source rocks as well as caprocks for conventional hydrocarbon accumulations or above H2/CO2 storage sites, as well as host rocks for radioactive waste disposal. The exploitation of mudrocks requires characterisation of pore structure over the...

MATSAS is a script-based MATLAB ® program for analysis of small angle scattering (SAS) of neutrons and X-rays data obtained from various facilities. The program has primarily been developed for sedimentary rock samples but is equally applicable for other porous media. MATSAS imports raw SAS data from Excel worksheets, combines small angle scatterin...

Water uptake at 298 K by two mesoporous silicas with different pore sizes was studied using volumetric vapor sorption. Through variation of sample pretreatment temperature and time, the number of surface hydroxyl groups was varied, leading to marked changes in the water sorption behavior. With increasing surface hydroxyl density, the adsorption of...

Coupled modelling, based on laboratory data, indicated that the storage seal above the Captain reservoir of the Peterhead CCS project could be affected by stresses caused by clay swelling due to CO2 interaction. In particular, calculations indicate that, over a period of 100 – 10,000 years, local shear failure in rock exposed to CO2 may occur under...

To quantitatively analyse the pore structure at a broad pore scale range (~ 2 nm to ~ 2 μm), low pressure sorption (LPS) and small angle neutron scattering (SANS) were conducted on several mudrocks originating from radioactive waste storage sites, hydrocarbon seals and shale gas reservoirs across the globe. These include Opalinus Clay, Switzerland,...

Characterization of coal micro-structure and the associated rock mechanical properties are of key importance for coal seam exploration, coal bed methane development, enhanced coal bed methane production and CO2 storage in deep coal seams. Considerable knowledge exists about coal chemical properties, but less is known about the nanoscale to the micr...

The aim of this study is to reveal key physiochemical factors controlling gas sorption in coals during periods of dramatic coal deposition in Earth's history – the Upper Carboniferous (326–299 Ma) and Permian (299–252 Ma). As a starting point we developed a database of about 1000 entries, including coal-specific parameters such as proximate and ult...

Assessing the probability and risk of migration of CO2 from a storage reservoir and its leakage at the surface forms a critical part of the evaluation of any geological storage site. Insights from small‐ and large‐scale demonstration projects, experimentation, numerical simulation, and natural analogues provide insights into the mechanism and proce...

Small angle neutron scattering (SANS) combined with very small angle neutron scattering (VSANS) have shown to scan pore size ranging between ~1nm and ~20µm. Neutron scattering is a statistically quantitative technique, which quantifies both accessible and inaccessible pores. With regard to abovementioned versatilities, SANS experiments were carried...

In most cases, the analysis of small-angle and wide-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS and WAXS, respectively) requires a theoretical model to describe the sample’s scattering, complicating the interpretation of the scattering resulting from complex heterogeneous samples. This is the reason why, in general, the analysis of a large number of scattering pa...