Affiliation:
1. Department of Mechanical Engineering Stanford University Stanford CA USA
2. SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory Menlo Park CA USA
Abstract
AbstractThe stimulation of crack growth in quartz and siliceous materials by injecting carbon dioxide (CO2) represents a key technology in long‐term carbon storage and in the development of natural gas wells. While this technology is widely used, the molecular impact of CO2 interactions on the solid matrix is only incompletely understood. In this work, we employ reactive molecular dynamics simulations to study how the CO2 fluid environment affects the mechanical properties of pre‐cracked single‐crystal quartz. The thermodynamic conditions of interest are those relevant to subsurface reservoirs. We report how structural properties of quartz—bond length distribution and crack tip shape—evolve upon introduction of a fluid. These properties are directly related to macroscopic quantities of the global stress–strain curves, thus reaffirming the inherent coupling across multiple scales for fluid–solid interactions in the subsurface. We find that CO2 reduces the fracture toughness of quartz by 12.1% compared to that of quartz in vacuum, thereby promoting crack growth and enhancing fluid transport in the subsurface.
Funder
Basic Energy Sciences
Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung
Publisher
American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Subject
Space and Planetary Science,Earth and Planetary Sciences (miscellaneous),Geochemistry and Petrology,Geophysics
Cited by
1 articles.
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