Water/acid gas interfacial tensions and their impact on acid gas geological storage

Acid gas geological disposal is a promising process to reduce CO2 atmospheric emissions and an environment-friendly and economic alternative to the transformation of H2S into sulphur by the Claus process. Acid gas confinement in geological formations is to a large extent controlled by the capillary properties of the water/acid–gas/caprock system, because a significant fraction of the injected gas rises buoyantly and accumulates beneath the caprock. These properties include the water/acid gas interfacial tension (IFT), to which the so-called capillary entry pressure of the gas in the water-saturated caprock is proportional. In this paper we present the first ever systematic water/acid gas IFT measurements carried out by the pendant drop technique under geological storage conditions. We performed IFT measurements for water/H2S systems over a large range of pressure (up to P = 15 MPa) and temperature (up to T = 120 °C). Water/H2S IFT decreases with increasing P and levels off at around 9–10 mN/m at high T (≥70 °C) and P (>12 MPa). The latter values are around 30–40% of water/CO2 IFTs, and around 20% of water/CH4 IFTs at similar T and P conditions. The IFT between water and a CO2 + H2S mixture at T = 77 °C and P > 7.5 MPa is observed to be approximately equal to the molar average IFT of the water/CO2 and water/H2S binary mixtures. Thus, when the H2S content in the stored acid gas increases the capillary entry pressure decreases, together with the maximum height of acid gas column and potential storage capacity of a given geological formation. Hence, considerable attention should be exercised when refilling with a H2S-rich acid gas a depleted gas reservoir, or a depleted oil reservoir with a gas cap: in the case of hydrocarbon reservoirs that were initially (i.e., at the time of their discovery) close to capillary leakage, acid gas leakage through the caprock will inevitably occur if the refilling pressure approaches the initial reservoir pressure.