Investigation of hydrodynamic instability of CO2 injection into an aquifer

Abstract

The two-dimensional problem of supercritical carbon dioxide injection into an aquifer is solved. Shocks and rarefaction waves propagating in a sequence from an injection well into the formation are described within the framework of a complete nonisothermal model of flows in a porous medium. In the approximation of isothermal immiscible water and carbon dioxide flow the hydrodynamic stability of the leading displacement front is investigated for various reservoir pressures and temperatures. The parameters of unstable fronts are determined using a sufficient instability condition formulated in analytic form. The approximate analytic results are supported by the direct numerical simulation of CO₂ injection using the complete model in which thermal effects and phase transitions are taken into account.