Acoustic emission monitoring of hydraulic fracturing laboratory experiment with supercritical and liquid CO₂

Abstract

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) is often used for enhanced oil recovery in depleted petroleum reservoirs, and its behavior in rock is also of interest in CO₂ capture and storage projects. CO₂ usually becomes supercritical (SC-CO₂) at depths greater than 1, 000 m, while it is liquid (L-CO₂) at low temperatures. The viscosity of L-CO₂ is one order lower than that of normal liquid water, and that of SC-CO₂ is much lower still. To clarify fracture behavior induced with injection of the low viscosity fluids, we conducted hydraulic fracturing experiments using 17 cm cubic granite blocks. The AE sources with the SC- and L-CO₂ injections tend to distribute in a larger area than those with water injection, and furthermore, SC-CO₂ tended to generate cracks extending more three dimensionally rather than along a flat plane than L-CO₂. It was also found that the breakdown pressures for SC- and L-CO₂ injections are expected to be considerably lower than for water.