A New Method Based on Boundary Element Method to Appraise CO2 Geological Storage Potential in Depleted Shale Gas Reservoirs

In recent years, greenhouse gases have increased in the atmosphere, and climate change concerns have triggered global efforts to find solutions for CO2 capture, separation, transport, and storage. Geological sequestration in the depleted unconventional reservoir is an effective measure to reduce the atmosphere’s CO2 content. The exact evaluation of the CO2 storage capacity can verify the feasibility of storing carbon dioxide and parameter optimization. A reasonable boundary element method to estimating the CO2 storage capacity of depleted shale gas reservoirs considering arbitrarily shaped boundaries is introduced. Firstly, the physical model with fracture networks is built based on the microseismic data. Then, the flow equation including the matrix and fracture can be obtained considering adsorption, and the star-delta transformation is used to deal with interconnected fracture segments. The point source function with an infinite boundary can be obtained after the Laplace transform method. Finally, the semianalytical flow solution is obtained by using the boundary element method in the Laplace region. Moreover, the results have a high agreement with commercial software for the regular boundary. The sensitivity of relevant parameters is analyzed by this method, and the importance of considering the boundary shape is emphasized. This method can evaluate the CO2 storage capacity of formation with the irregular boundary and is regarded as the guide of parameter optimization in CO2 storage.