Impact of wet supercritical CO2 injection on fly ash geopolymer cement under elevated temperatures for well cement applications

An alternative cement system created through geopolymerization of fly ash offers favorable properties such as able to resist acidic fluids and possess high compressive strength. However, the application of fly ash geopolymer as wellbore cement under carbon dioxide (CO2) environment at elevated temperature is not well recorded in the literature. This paper characterizes the fly ash-based geopolymer cement and experimentally investigates its mechanical and microstructure changes after exposed to CO2 under elevated temperature. Microstructure identification on the altered cement paste was conducted by the analysis of XRD and SEM. In this study, fly ash-based alkali-activated cement was made using 8 molal sodium hydroxide and sodium silicate as alkali activators. The results found that crystal-like shape identified as calcium carbonate was formed at the surface of spherical fly ash particle after carbonation formation. The strength of geopolymer cement was found not to be decreased although carbonation process was occurred. Microstructure analysis revealed that zeolite was formed during CO2 acid exposure for geopolymer cement which contributes to the strength development.