CO2-GS - Environmental technology for geological storage of carbon dioxide

This project aims at developing environmental technologies for reducing the atmospheric CO2 concentration. The first part of the project evaluates the potential environmental impacts of leaks from CO2 storage sites on shallow aquifers. Research will focus on; a) Generating generic modeling scenarios for reservoir responses when supercritical CO2 is injected into a geological storage complex.; b) Development of model codes to simulate multi-phase CO2 transport coupled to geochemical and geomechanical processes; c) The potential impact of escaping CO2 on the groundwater chemical composition; d) Geophysical methods for monitoring different CO2 phases in shallow aquifers systems and obtaining an quantitative understanding of the transport of gaseous CO2 in the underground. The second part of the project explores a new approach for capturing CO2 from the atmosphere by enhancing the CO2 content of infiltrating groundwater, for example by reacting CO2 in the soil zone with minerals like carbonates or reactive silicates, thereby bringing much more CO2 in solution. Field investigations will be carried out where experimental plots on CaCO3 free soils will be exposed to different scenarios of land use, mineral addition and irrigation. If successful this technique bears a promise of integrating CO2 storage with land use