S. M. Benson

• Stanford University

Understanding the migration and trapping of CO$_2$ in the subsurface is vital to geologic carbon storage projects. Traditional characterization methods employ steady-state co-injection experiments to determine relative permeability and trapping efficiency. Although laboratory studies aim to replicate reservoir conditions, co-injection experiments a...

Understanding multi-scale heterogeneity in porous media has become increasingly critical as the world transitions from fossil fuel production to geological storage of CO2 and H2 for climate change mitigation. This commentary examines why small-scale heterogeneities have taken on a heightened importance in modeling subsurface fluid migration. We ide...

The transport of chemical species in rocks is affected by their structural heterogeneity to yield a wide spectrum of local solute concentrations. To quantify such imperfect mixing, advanced methodologies are needed that augment the traditional breakthrough curve analysis by probing solute concentration within the fluids locally. Here, we demonstrat...

Recycling lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) can supplement critical materials and improve the environmental sustainability of LIB supply chains. In this work, environmental impacts (greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption, energy consumption) of industrial-scale production of battery-grade cathode materials from end-of-life LIBs are compared to thos...

The interaction of multiple fluids through a heterogeneous pore space leads to complex pore-scale flow dynamics, such as intermittent pathway flow. The non-local nature of these dynamics, and the size of the 4D datasets acquired to capture them, presents challenges in identifying key fluctuations controlling fluid connectivity. To address these cha...

The injection of CO2 into subsurface reservoirs provides a long term solution for anthropogenic emissions. A variable injection rate (such as ramping the flow rate up or down) provides flexibility to injection sites, and could influence the amount of residual trapping. Observations made in cm-scale samples showed that starting at a low flow rate es...

The increasing cooling needs in commercial buildings, exacerbated by climate change, warrant immediate attention. These buildings, characterized by their long lifespans and slow stock turnover, change consumption over time. This study develops simple, interpretable data-driven models using weather- and occupancy-related features to analyze the cool...

Fuel cell electric vehicles utilizing hydrogen are one option for reducing emissions in the transportation sector. Future hydrogen demand for the mobility markets will be partially dependent on the evolution of state and national policies and incentives. Hydrogen from natural gas plus carbon capture and sequestration (SMR-CCS) is one pathway for ma...

Recycling lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) can supplement existing supplies of critical materials and improve the environmental sustainability of LIB supply chains. In this work, environmental impacts (greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption, energy consumption) of industrial-scale production of battery-grade cathode materials from used LIBs are co...

Monitoring is an important component of geological carbon storage operations because it provides data that can be used to estimate key quantities such as CO2\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\odd...

Recycling lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) can supplement existing supplies of critical materials and improve the environmental sustainability of LIB supply chains. In this work, environmental intensities (greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption, energy consumption) of industrial-scale production of battery-grade cathode materials from used LIBs ar...

Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is playing a role in mitigating carbon emissions, and that role is expected to grow dramatically with time. A key element to the widespread deployment of CCS is finding a suitable sequestration site for carbon storage. Site screening and ranking frameworks designed to provide insights into the suitability of s...

Knowledge of the spatial distribution of fracture apertures is essential for reliable characterization of flow and transport processes in fractured systems and for better understanding of physicochemical matrix–fracture interactions. Here, we propose and test two image-based methods, thereby extending the current experimental capabilities to charac...

The study of natural CO2 storage reservoirs has demonstrated that carbon mineral trapping is the safest mechanism for subsurface CO2 storage. The slow rate of fluid-rock reactions makes it imperative to use reactive transport simulations as a tool for estimating reservoir scale carbon mineral trapping capacities. However, there is often a disparity...

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is an essential technology for achieving carbon neutrality. Depositional environments with sandstone and interbedded shale layers are promising for CO2 storage because they can retain CO2 beneath continuous and discontinuous shale layers. However, conventional numerical simulation of shale–sandstone systems is compu...

Understanding flow, transport, chemical reactions, and hydro-mechanical processes in fractured geologic materials is key for optimizing a range of subsurface processes including carbon dioxide and hydrogen storage, unconventional energy resource extraction, and geothermal energy recovery. Flow and transport processes in naturally fractured shale ro...

Buildings represent over half of global electricity demand. Cooling buildings already accounts for over 9% of global electricity demand and is expected to grow rapidly due to climate-change induced hot-spells and increasing prosperity in developing economies. In the US, commercial buildings represent 35% of nationwide electricity consumption. Incre...

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is an important strategy for reducing carbon dioxide emissions and mitigating climate change. We consider the storage aspect of CCS, which involves injecting carbon dioxide into underground reservoirs. This requires accurate and high-resolution predictions of carbon dioxide plume migration and reservoir pressure bui...

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is an important strategy for reducing carbon dioxide emissions and mitigating climate change. We consider the storage aspect of CCS, which involves injecting carbon dioxide into underground reservoirs. This requires accurate and high-resolution predictions of carbon dioxide plume migration and reservoir pressure bui...

Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is playing a role in mitigating carbon emissions and that role is expected to grow dramatically with time. Clustering CO2 sources and sinks through hubs is one way to achieve large-scale deployment of CCS and widespread decarbonization of the energy sector. A key element to the success of hub projects is findi...

In this field-data-based simulation study, we apply novel rate-dependent, anisotropic saturation functions curve-fitted to match the flow behaviour of laminated sand- and siltstones from the CO2CRC's Otway International Test Centre (Australia), in well-spot simulations of plume spreading at the site. Scenario analysis is conducted by performing sim...

The electric grid is evolving rapidly in response to climate change. As renewables are incorporated, more interconnection of the grid is expected. Exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) from fossil-fuel generation causes adverse health impacts, including thousands of premature deaths each year in the United States. It is well understood that P...

Numerical simulation of multiphase flow in porous media is essential for many geoscience applications. Machine learning models trainedwith numerical simulation data can provide a faster alternative to traditional simulators. Here we present U-FNO, a novel neural network architecture for solving multiphase flow problems with superior accuracy, speed...

Quantification of heterogeneous multiscale permeability in geologic porous media is key for understanding and predicting flow and transport processes in the subsurface. Recent utilization of in situ imaging, specifically positron emission tomography (PET), enables the measurement of three‐dimensional (3‐D) time‐lapse radiotracer solute transport in...

Plain Language Summary Solutes and contaminants dissolved in a fluid, such as water, are carried along with the fluid as it migrates in the subsurface. In some subsurface settings, there are multiple fluids present. For example, above the water table a zone of soil and rock has pores filled with different fractions of water and air; in geologic car...

Geological CO\(_2\) sequestration is an effective approach to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions by permanently trapping CO\(_2\) in the subsurface. A large portion of injected CO\(_2\) is trapped by capillary forces in pores and eventually dissolves into the reservoir brine due to convective mixing to achieve permanent entrapment. In regions where...

California's Senate Bill 100 establishes a goal to reach a zero-carbon grid by 2045, which opens the door for currently available low-carbon, dispatchable energy sources to contribute to California's decarbonization. This study utilizes a detailed capacity expansion and dispatch model of California to assess the role that low-carbon, dispatchable r...

To encourage and guide decarbonization efforts, better tools are needed to monitor real-time CO2 and criteria air pollutant emissions from electricity consumption, production, imports, and exports. Using real-time data from the electricity system is especially challenging for quantitative applications requiring high quality and physically consisten...

Determination of representative saturation functions for permeable reservoir sandstones requires consideration of mm-cm scale laminations and crossbedding common in these heterogeneous porous media. Modelling selected laminated sandstones from CO2CRC's Otway International Test Centre in Victoria, Australia as bimodal composites of different rock ty...

This paper presents an initial evaluation and concept description of an approach to CO2 storage where the reservoir rocks are volcanic terrains that have been built up from the seafloor and consist of several kilometers of stacked lava, pyroclastic, and volcano-sedimentary rocks, and where CO2 could be injected in large quantities in the supercriti...

Capillary heterogeneity trapping caused by mesoscale heterogeneity at the millimeter scale has been shown to have a great potential in immobilizing a significant amount of CO2 in CO2 geologic storage. The goal of this study is to develop and apply a macroscopic percolation simulator to better understand how post-imbibition CO2 capillary heterogenei...

To encourage and guide decarbonization efforts, better tools are needed to monitor the emissions embodied in electricity consumption, production, imports, and exports. Using electric system operating data of varying quality is especially challenging for applications that require these data to be physically consistent, where time-intensive, manual d...

New guidelines and suggestions for taking reliable effective relative permeability measurements in heterogeneous rocks are presented. The results are based on a combination of high resolution of 3D core-flooding simulations and semi-analytical solutions for the heterogeneous cores. Synthetic “data sets” are generated using TOUGH2 and are subsequent...

Previous work has shown that individual deformation bands act like capillary barriers and influence fluid saturation. More common in nature, however, are clusters of deformation bands that form complex three dimensional geometries. The aim of this study is to analyze the extent and mechanisms of fluid compartmentalization due to clustered bands. Dr...

We investigate the impact of sub-grid scale horizontal lamination on the migration of the CO2 plume during geologic sequestration. A new physics-based model that includes the effects of capillary and viscous forces is used to obtain effective flow-rate dependent capillary pressure and relative permeability functions. For this purpose a macroscopic...

We investigate chemical transport in laboratory rock cores using unidirectional pulse tracer experiments. Breakthrough curves (BTCs) measured at various flow rates in one sandstone and two carbonate samples are interpreted using the one‐dimensional Continuous Time Random Walk (CTRW) formulation with a truncated power law (TPL) model. Within the sam...

Recent research has highlighted the impact mesoscale heterogeneity can have on larger‐scale multiphase fluid flow properties. However, currently, there is no consensus on how to quickly and reliably analyze coreflooding experimental data to gain insights into mesoscale capillary‐dominated flow behaviors and how rock petrophysical properties affect...

A continuum-scale representation of Ostwald ripening in heterogeneous porous media - Volume 889 - Yaxin Li, Charlotte Garing, Sally M. Benson

Accurate determination of petrophysical and multiphase flow properties in sandstones is necessary for reservoir characterization, for instance for carbon dioxide and hydrogen storage in geological formations or for enhanced oil recovery. Several studies have examined the effect of heterogeneities, such as fractures, bedding planes and laminae, on c...

Understanding electricity consumption and production patterns is a necessary first step toward reducing the health and climate impacts of associated emissions. In this work, the economic input–output model is adapted to track emissions flows through electric grids and quantify the pollution embodied in electricity production, exchanges, and, ultima...

Spontaneous imbibition—the process of a wetting fluid displacing a nonwetting fluid purely by capillary forces—is a ubiquitous phenomenon in porous and fibrous materials. Here we present a new experimental method for quantification of spontaneous imbibition in geologic materials. This method makes it possible to perform spontaneous imbibition under...

The study of large-scale human energy systems is not new; climate change concerns and advances in computation have created a growing area of study with an increasingly rich set of tools and questions. However, this work is scattered across many research communities. We propose uniting these efforts under a common discipline, which we call “macro-en...

To increase confidence in the long-term security of CO2 geologic storage, reliable predictions of the level of post-injection CO2 residual trapping are needed. In this study, we conduct CO2/water coreflooding experiments at reservoir conditions on nine core samples with different degrees and types of heterogeneity to find the best petrophysical pro...

This data article provides detailed explanation and data on CO2/water coreflooding experiments performed on nine sandstone rock cores. Refer to the research article "Predicting CO2 Residual Trapping Ability Based on Experimental Petrophysical Properties for Different Sandstone Types" [1] for data interpretation. The reader can expect to find experi...

Pore-scale modelling of Ostwald ripening – CORRIGENDUM - Volume 866 - Jacques A. de Chalendar, Charlotte Garing, Sally M. Benson

Decarbonization of electricity generation together with electrification of energy-and-carbon-intensive services such as heating and cooling is needed to address ambitious climate goals. Here we show that city-scale electrification of heat with large-scale thermal storage also cost-effectively unlocks significant additional operational benefits for...

• Download : Download high-res image (133KB) • Download : Download full-size image Jacques A. de Chalendar is a doctoral candidate in the Energy Resources Engineering department at Stanford University and a State Grid Graduate Student Fellow through Stanford’s Bits and Watts initiative. His PhD research focuses on applying state-of-the-art computat...

Recent studies have demonstrated that positron emission tomography (PET) is a valuable tool for in-situ characterization of fluid transport in porous and fractured geologic media at the laboratory scale. While PET imaging is routinely used for clinical cancer diagnosis and preclinical medical research—and therefore imaging facilities are available...

The analysis of dispersive flows in heterogeneous porous media is complicated by the appearance of anomalous transport. Novel laboratory protocols are needed to probe the mixing process by measuring the spatial structure of the concentration field in the medium. Here, we report on a systematic investigation of miscible displacements in a microporou...

We present a trajectory-based technique for calculating solute transport in a porous medium that has several advantages over existing methods. Unlike streamlines, the extended trajectories are influenced by each of the important parameters governing transport, including molecular diffusion and transverse dispersion. The approach is complete and doe...

Improved methods for predicting fluid transport and vesicle connectivity in heterogeneous basalts are critical for determining the long-term reaction and trapping behavior of sequestered carbon dioxide and maximizing the efficiency of geothermal energy production. In this study we measured vesicle geometry, pore connectivity, and vesicle surface ar...

To reduce emissions of the greenhouse gas CO2 to the atmosphere, sequestration in deep saline aquifers is a viable strategy. Residual trapping is a key containment process important to the success of CO2 storage operations. While residual trapping affects CO2 migration over large scales, it is inherently a pore-scale process. Pore-network models (P...

Accurate descriptions of heterogeneity in porous media are important for understanding and modeling single phase (e.g. contaminant transport, saltwater intrusion) and multiphase (e.g. geologic carbon storage, enhanced oil recovery) transport problems. Application of medical imaging to experimentally quantify these processes has led to significant p...

In a saturated solution with dispersed clusters of a second phase, the mechanism by which the larger clusters grow at the expense of the smaller ones is called Ostwald ripening. Although the mechanism is well understood in situations where multiple clusters of gas exist in a liquid solution, evolution is much more complicated to predict when the tw...

Microbially induced carbonate precipitation (MICP) is a novel method for controlling permeability in the subsurface with potential for sealing or reducing leakage from subsurface engineering works such as carbon sequestration reservoirs. The purpose of this research was to measure, at core scale, the change in reservoir permeability and capillary p...

We report results from an experimental investigation on the hysteretic behaviour of the capillary pressure curve for the supercritical CO2-water system in a Berea Sandstone core. Previous observations have highlighted the importance of subcore-scale capillary heterogeneity in developing local saturations during drainage; we show in this study that...

Residually trapped CO2 is often assumed to be stable when simulating its long-term fate in geological storage reservoirs. Ostwald ripening is a mechanism that could potentially cause remobilization. We compare the case of bubbles of gas in a free liquid to that of a solid porous matrix. Using a new continuous pore network model, we gain insights on...

A CO2-brine drainage and imbibition cycle was performed in a Boise sandstone sample at reservoir conditions (1300 PSI, 44°C) at the Advanced Light Source, LBNL. The sample was repeatedly imaged, at the pore-scale, using synchrotron-based X-ray microtomography. In particular the temporal evolution of residually trapped CO2 was monitored for about 30...

Understanding and quantifying the role of reservoir heterogeneity on multiphase flow and the immobilization of CO2 is essential for predicting and validating models of long-term CCS reservoir performance. In this study a novel imaging technique known as Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is used to image pulse tracer transport through a heterogeneo...

A multi-scale synchrotron-based X-ray microtomographic dataset of residually trapped air after gravity-driven brine imbibition was acquired for three samples with differing pore topologies and morphologies; image volumes were reconstructed with voxel sizes from 4.44 µm down to 0.64 µm. Capillary pressure distributions among the population of trappe...

Battery vehicles and fuel cell vehicles can facilitate the use of low-carbon energy sources in stationary applications, as well as for transportation. For instance, battery vehicles might enable peak load shifting and short-term electricity storage when connected to the electric grid. Hydrogen infrastructure that provides refueling of fuel cell veh...

The CO2 reduction potential of battery and fuel cell electric vehicles (BEV/FCEV) is linked to the success of the energy transition. Both vehicle types can facilitate the integration of intermittent renewables. H2 generation and storage infrastructure to support FCEVs is a promising opportunity for synergy between the transportation and building se...

This study utilizes synchrotron X-ray micro-tomography and pore scale modeling to investigate the process of gas exsolution and how it affects non-wetting phase relative permeability. Exsolved gas distributions are measured on Domengine and Boise sandstone samples using synchrotron X-ray micro-tomography. Observed gas phase distributions are compar...

In order to ensure safe and effective long-term geologic storage of carbon dioxide (CO2), existing regulations require both assessing leakage risks and responding to leakage incidents through corrective measures. However, until now, these two pieces of risk management have been usually addressed separately. This study proposes a methodological fram...

Various geoscientific applications require a fast prediction of fracture permeability for an optimal workflow. Hence, the objective of the current study is to introduce and validate a practical method to characterize and approximate single flow in fractures under different stress conditions by using a core-flooding apparatus, in situ X-ray computed...

This study investigates the stress-dependency of relative permeability in rock fractures. Previous studies provide contradictory evidence of the influence of increasing stress on the relative permeability of fractures. Some studies suggest that irreducible water saturation increases, while others show the reverse. In an attempt to resolve these dif...

We report results of an experimental investigation into the effects of small-scale (mm–cm) heterogeneities on solute spreading and mixing in a Berea sandstone core. Pulse-tracer tests have been carried out in the Péclet number regime $Pe=6{-}40$ and are supplemented by a unique combination of two imaging techniques. X-ray computed tomography (CT)...

Assuring the storage security of geologically sequestered CO2 is essential for proper project management and long-term emissions reductions. Storage security relies not only on comprehensive site characterization prior to injection and careful reservoir management, but also on having a suite of intervention and remediation strategies available to i...

Integrating variable, low-emissions electricity generation into the electric grid is one of the outstanding grand challenges in developing a sustainable energy infrastructure. Energy storage has an important role in integrating variable generation into the grid at large scale. Building this energy storage capacity has an energy cost, as with any ma...

Direct electrocatalytic reduction of carbon dioxide (deCO 2 rr) is being developed as a route to energy-dense liquid transportation fuels for a low-emissions future. This technology would reduce net emissions from fuel combustion, because these would be fully offset by upstream capture of the CO 2 used to produce the fuel. However, it would produce...

The objective of the current study is to investigate and validate stress-dependent single fluid flow in a fractured core sample using in situ X-ray computed tomography (CT) scans and a finite-volume method solving the Navier-Stokes-Brinkman equations. The permeability of the fractured sandstone sample was measured stepwise during a loading-unloadin...

Various methods have been proposed to measure fracture aperture distributions, including X-ray computed tomography (CT) imaging, which has the advantage that it can be combined with dynamic flow experiments. In this paper, we present a calibration-free missing CT attenuation (CFMA) imaging method for measuring fracture apertures that avoids time-co...

In this study we present the results of an extensive multiscale characterization of the flow properties and structural and capillary heterogeneities of the Heletz sandstone. We performed petrographic, porosity and capillary pressure measurements on several subsamples. We quantified mm-scale heterogeneity in saturation distributions in a rock core d...

This paper provides an overview of the site characterization work at the Heletz site, in preparation to scientifically motivated CO2 injection experiments. The outcomes are geological and hydrogeological models with associated medium properties and baseline conditions. The work has consisted on first re-analyzing the existing data base from ∼40 wel...