Investigating underground CO2 storage in porous media using geological labs on chip

CO2 geological storage in deep saline aquifers represents a mediation solution for reducing the anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Consequently, this kind of storage requires adequate scientific knowledge and tools at the pore scale to evaluate injection scenarios or to estimate reservoir capacity. In this context, porous media designed inside high pressure / high temperature microfluidic reactors (micromodel or geological labs on chip - GLoCs) turn out to be excellent tools to complement the classical core-scale experimental approaches to investigate the different mechanisms associated with CO2 geological storage in deep saline aquifers). This paper will first highlight the latest results obtained at ICMCB concerning the application of the GLoCs to study the invasion processes of CO2 in water and brine saturated GLoCs. In particular, direct optical visualization and image treatments allow following the evolution of the CO2/brine phase distribution within the pores, including displacement mechanisms and pore saturation levels. Finally, we will present some ongoing work aiming at integrating in situ spectroscopy techniques in HP microreactors to get information about the dissolution and mineralization trapping. Beyond CO2 geological storage investigations, the GLoCs could also find wider applications in geological-related studies such as Enhanced Oil Recovery, shale gas recovery or geothermal energy.