Carbon Dioxide CO2: Rising Levels and Capturing and Sequestration

Renewable Energy Paper
Student Name
Department, University
Course Code: Course Name
Professor’s Name
Due Date
Renewable Energy Paper
Article 1 Summary and Comments
According to Pan et al. (2018), the heightened concern over the rising levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), mainly from the combustion of anthropogenic fossil fuels, raises research questions to develop alternative interventions to mitigate CO2 emissions from industrial and power plants. In this context, there is a paucity of research evaluating the coupling of reservoirs and wellbores. A significant share of the existing commercial dynamic wellbore archetypes is anchored on the presumption of a constant flowrate fluid that influxes from the reservoir into the particular well for a specific pressure discrepancy between the specific bottom hole pressure and the reservoirs. The article investigated the injection of supercritical CO2 (sCO2) into geothermal reservoirs to establish its performance regarding the advantages of utilizing CO2 derived from fossil fuel plants for geothermal heat mining. The study simulated a coupled wellbore-reservoir taking into account pure sCO2 flow within the injection well, the interplay of water and sCO2 within the porous reservoir, as well as the sCO2 two-phase mixture flow as well as water within the production well. The solubility and transport characteristics of sCO2 would assist mitigate contamination, degradation, and scaling of power systems placed within the steam-based geothermal structures. The study findings indicated that CO2 usage could act as a valuable renewable energy source. The output wellbore penetrating depth into the basin, the injection and output wellbore distance, and the injection’s flowrate pose a first-order effect on the reservoir pressure management. Additionally, CO2 injection temperature significantly impacts the system’s thermosiphon attributes (Pan et al., 2018).
The study pointed to the need to emphasize reservoir permeability given its sensitive impact on the pressure upsurge. This way, permeability becomes crucial when choosing a reservoir to deploy heat mining based on CO2. Before sCO2 production began, a pressure peak was recorded, which is undesirable as it increases the risk of potential CO2 outflow to the surface or caprock fracture. Therefore, it is necessary to mitigate these risks by exploring operational approaches. Accordingly, the attached wellbore-reservoir structure sensitivity analysis offered crucial knowledge regarding the effect of specific variables, including inoculation temperature and flowrate, as well as the well configuration of the integrated system performance. The sensitivity analysis warrants system optimization on the combined wellbore-reservoir systems. Moreover, the aforementioned analysis offered crucial data regarding operating conditions, including well configuration, resulting in the cost-effective exploitation of geothermal resources (Pan et al., 2018). Although the results offer insights regarding the impact of the structure of the tied wellbore basin for the water/CO2 combination, further studies should consider performing a para...