Fast assessment of CO₂ plume characteristics using a connectivity based proxy

During the operation of a geological carbon storage project, it is crucial to estimate the uncertainty in the flow characteristics of injected CO₂. However, because a large suite of geological models are probable given sparse static data, it is impractical to conduct full physics flow simulations in the entire suite in order to quantify the uncertainty in CO₂ plume migrations. We propose a fast connectivity based proxy that approximates a CO₂ plume migration in a 3-dimensional heterogeneous reservoir during an injection period where viscous forces are dominant over capillary forces. The geological models are ranked based on the extent of the approximated CO₂ plumes. By selecting a representative group of models among the ranked models, the uncertainty in the spatial and temporal characteristics of the CO₂ plume migrations can be quickly quantified. We saved about 90% of the computational cost of quantifying the uncertainty in the extent of CO₂ plumes using the connectivity based proxy.