Impact and detectability of hypothetical CCS offshore seep scenarios as an aid to storage assurance and risk assessment

Blackford, Jerry; Alendal, Guttorm; Avlesen, Helge; Brereton, Ashley; Cazenave, Pierre W.; Chen, Baixin; Dewar, Marius; Holt, Jason ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3298-8477; Phelps, Jack. 2020 Impact and detectability of hypothetical CCS offshore seep scenarios as an aid to storage assurance and risk assessment. International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control, 95, 102949. 102949. 10.1016/j.ijggc.2019.102949

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijggc.2019.102949

Abstract/Summary

Carbon Capture and Storage has the potential to make a significant contribution to the mitigation of climate change, however there is a regulatory and societal obligation to demonstrate storage robustness and minimal local environmental impact. This requires an understanding of environmental impact potential and detectability of a range of hypothetical leak scenarios. In the absence of a significant body of real-world release experiments this study collates the results of 86 modelled scenarios of offshore marine releases derived from five different model systems. This synthesis demonstrates a consistent generalised relationship between leak rate, detectability and impact potential of a wide range of hypothetical releases from CO2 storage, which can be described by a power law. For example a leak of the order of 1 T per day should be detectable at, at least, 60 m distance with an environmental impact restricted to less than a 15 m radius of the release point. Small releases are likely to require bottom mounted (lander) monitoring to ensure detection. In summary this work, when coupled with a quantification of leakage risk can deliver a first order environmental impact assessment as an aid to the consenting process. Further this work demonstrates that non-catastrophic release events can be detected at thresholds well below levels which would undermine storage performance or significantly impact the environment, given an appropriate monitoring strategy.

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI):	10.1016/j.ijggc.2019.102949
ISSN:	17505836
Date made live:	06 Aug 2020 15:23 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/528309

Item Type:

Publication - Article

Digital Object Identifier (DOI):

10.1016/j.ijggc.2019.102949

ISSN:

17505836

Date made live:

06 Aug 2020 15:23 +0 (UTC)

URI:

https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/528309