Geochemical modeling possibilities of CO₂ and brine inflow to freshwater aquifers

Szabó, Zsuzsanna and Gál, Nóra Edit and Kun, Éva and Szőcs, Teodóra and Falus, György (2017) Geochemical modeling possibilities of CO₂ and brine inflow to freshwater aquifers. Central European Geology, 60 (3). pp. 289-298. ISSN 1788-2281

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Abstract

In worst-case leakage scenarios of CO₂ geological storage, CO₂ or brine may contaminate shallower drinking water aquifers. This work applies an advanced geochemical modeling methodology to predict and understand the effects of the aforementioned contamination scenarios. Several possibilities, such as equilibrium batch, kinetic batch, and 1D kinetic reactive transport simulations, were tested. These have all been implemented in the widely applied PHREEQC code. The production of figures and animations has been automated by R programming. The different modeling levels provide complementary information to each other. Both scenarios (CO₂ or brine leakage) indicate the increase of ion concentrations in the freshwater, which might exceed drinking water limit values. The dissolution of CO₂ changes the pH and induces mineral dissolution and precipitation in the aquifer and therefore changes in solution composition. Brine replacement of freshwater due to the pressure increase in the geological system induces mineral reactions as well.

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