Several potential CO₂ storage reservoirs have been found to have insufficient porosity and permeability to support cost effective commercial-scale injection. As a result, the use of hydraulic fracturing to enhance injectivity and storage capacity of CO₂ storage reservoirs was explored. Previous modeling studies indicate that fracturing can increase storage capacity by modest to significant amounts (10%–35%), depending on model assumptions. Simulations completed as part of this study confirm that for a range of horizontal well lengths, number of fractures, fracture geometries, and fracture properties, injectivity is improved and capacity increases by 13%–71% over the base case unfractured vertical well. Intuitively, increasing the well length and number of fractures had a corresponding impact on increased capacity. Fracture area (i.e., the fracture height multiplied by its width) was an important parameter for increasing capacity but the specific geometry (e.g., the ratio of height-to-width) was unimportant. The most important aspect that affected capacity was the ability of a fracture to connect high permeability horizontal zones in the reservoir. This would allow a single well to access both layers, thereby maximizing total storage capacity of the reservoir while likely leading to an overall increase of the CO₂ footprint, which is an important consideration for Class VI UIC permitting. The results of this work demonstrate that hydraulic fracturing is an attractive option to consider when faced with an underperforming geologic carbon storage site that is at risk of causing a project to fail.

已发现几个潜在的CO ₂储层的孔隙度和渗透率不足，无法支持经济有效的工业规模注入。结果，使用水力压裂来提高CO _2的注入性和储存能力探索了储层。先前的模型研究表明，根据模型假设，压裂可将储藏能力适度提高到相当数量（10％–35％）。作为该研究的一部分而完成的模拟结果证实，对于水平井长度，裂缝数量，裂缝几何形状和裂缝特性，与基础情况下的未裂缝垂直井相比，注入能力得到了改善，产能提高了13％–71％。凭直觉，增加井眼长度和裂缝数量对增加产能有相应的影响。断裂面积（即，断裂高度乘以其宽度）是增加产能的重要参数，但是具体的几何形状（例如，高宽比）并不重要。影响产能的最重要方面是裂缝连接储层中高渗透率水平层的能力。这将允许单个井进入两层，从而最大化储层的总存储容量，同时可能导致CO的总体增加₂占用空间，这是UIC VI类许可的重要考虑因素。这项工作的结果表明，当遇到性能不佳的地质碳储存站点时，水力压裂是一个很有吸引力的选择，该站点可能会导致项目失败。