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.