Geological storage and Geothermy Energy
As a result of global population pressure and industrialization, society today faces many new challenges such as rising levels of atmospheric CO2, management of waste in the nuclear industry and the storage of energy. These environmental and energy issues have one thing in common: the use of geological storage.
GeoRessources, through work undertaken under the ‘GeoSystems’ theme, has four major applications in the field of geological and geothermal energy: storage of radioactive waste, CO2, H2, and high enthalpy geothermal energy.
These applications form part of fundamental research that can be summarized in the following five questions, which form the foundations of our project:
- How do rocks used for geological storage or subjected to fluid injection respond to different chemical and thermal forces?
- How can we characterize and predict the mechanical behavior of the host rock and ensure containment?
- What is the fate of complex fluids that are generated, injected or are in-place during storage or injection operations?
- What kinds of metrology must be developed in order to properly monitor fluid-transfer phenomena and ensure proper surveillance and security of storage sites?
- How can we improve and validate models of the dynamics of atmospheric gases based on theoretical calculations?
These five issues are addressed through an approach that combines experimental simulations, numerical modeling and field measurements.