A simple method to simulate thermo-hydro-mechanical processes in
leakoff-dominated hydraulic fracturing with application to geological
carbon storage
Abstract
A potential risk of injecting CO2 into storage reservoirs with marginal
permeability (≲ 10-14 m2) is that commercial injection rates could
induce fracturing of the reservoir and/or the caprock. Such fracturing
is essentially fluid-driven fracturing in the leakoff-dominated regime.
Recent studies suggested that fracturing, if contained within the lower
portion of the caprock complex, could substantially improve the
injectivity without compromising the overall seal integrity. Modeling
this phenomenon entails complex coupled interactions among the fluids,
the fracture, the reservoir, and the caprock. We develop a simple method
to capture all these interplays in high fidelity by sequentially
coupling a hydraulic fracturing module with a coupled
thermal-hydrological-mechanical (THM) model for nonisothermal multiphase
flow. The model was made numerically tractable by taking advantage of
self-stabilizing features of leakoff-dominated fracturing. The model is
validated against the PKN solution in the leakoff-dominated regime.
Moreover, we employ the model to study thermo-poromechanical responses
of a fluid-driven fracture in a field-scale carbon storage reservoir
that is loosely based on the In Salah project’s Krechba reservoir. The
model reveals complex yet intriguing behaviors of the
reservoir-caprock-fluid system with fracturing induced by cold CO2
injection. We also study the effects of the in situ stress contrast
between the reservoir and caprock and thermal contraction on the
vertical containment of the fracture. The proposed model proves
effective in simulating practical problems on length and time scales
relevant to geological carbon storage.