About the project
Storing carbon in basalt comes with many benefits. The CO2 will quickly react with the divalent cations (Ca2+, Mg2+, and Fe2+) from dissolving minerals in the basalt and form carbonate minerals. In comparison, it might take several thousand years for significant amounts of CO2 to mineralize in a sandstone reservoir. Once mineralized, the carbon will be immobilized over geological timescales. Storing carbon in basalt also provides large reservoir volumes worldwide. Estimates suggest that mid-ocean ridges worldwide can store up to 100,000 Gt of CO2. This is more than 2000 times the annual global emissions of CO2, and the possibilities of carbon storage in volcanic sequences are therefore important to study further.
Sketch showing carbon dioxide being injected into a basalt reservoir offshore Norway. The basalt sequence (pink, purple) is overlain by clay sediments (brown) and underlain by clastic sediments (green) that have been intruded by sills and dykes (red). Borehole 642E, drilled as part of the Ocean Drilling Program, is indicated. In the Faroe Islands, similar basaltic sequences outcrop at the surface allowing us to study them in great detail. (Rosenqvist et al., 2023).
CO2Basalt is led by Professor François Renard and will involve an interdisciplinary group of researchers in geosciences, physics, and computational science. The project involves 1) physicists and geologists of the Njord Centre at the University of Oslo; 2) the company Volcanic Basin Petroleum Research AS (VBPR), which will provide seismic data and scientific and industry cores and borehole data from the Norwegian Sea; 3) the Norwegian national infrastructure “Goldschmidt Laboratory”, hosted by UiO, which will provide microscale porosity characterization with electron microscopy; and 4) the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) where we will perform dynamic microtomography experiments.
Objectives
The project aims to answer the following questions:
1. What role do fractures, and lineaments play in a potential basaltic CO2 reservoir?
A site study on the Faroe Islands Basalt Group.
.png)
Figure: Largescale mapping of lineaments on Eiðiskollur, Faroe Islands (Johannesen et al. 2023)
2. What are the petrophysical properties of the basalts and how will these affect fluid flow migration and reactivity in a CO2 storage scenario?
.png)
Figure: CT-scan of a porous basalt showing the separated porespace (Rosenqvist et al., 2023).
3. How do dynamic fractures damage basaltic glass at the nanoscale and how does the water enter these fractures in the wake of the rupture?
.png)
Figure: Nanoscale fracture propagation in basaltic glass (Guren et al., 2023).
Financing
The project is funded by the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at the University of Oslo.
Scientific Advisory Board
The Scientific Advisory Board for CO2Basalts consists of Sigurður Gíslason, Oliver Plümper and Kim Senger.