Abs​tract: Due to the growing global demand for energy and the relatively slow transition to sustainable energy sources, the combustion of carbon-based fuels will remain our major energy source for the coming decades. In order to achieve climate targets, transition technologies are required to reduce CO2 emissions during this period. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is such a technology with a high potential to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, and potentially even achieve a negative CO2 footprint – i.e. an active transfer of CO2 into the long-term carbon cycle. While for CO2 capture and transport, cost efficiency is the main driver for development, subsurface storage is focused on storage capacity and storage safety. With this in mind we are investigating plume migration and trapping mechanisms in the confined pore space of deep saline aquifers and depleted hydrocarbon reservoirs in order to assess the performance and risks of injection operations. 

In the presentation, CCS will be discussed in relation to energy demand, ongoing injection operations and ‘Clean Fossil Fuels’. The presentation will illustrate the relevant subsurface fluid-displacement and trapping mechanisms. Special attention will be paid on relatively new developments in pore-scale physics. In the context of pore-scale fluid topology and processes, the analogy between capillary trapping and remobilization in CO2 sequestration operations and hydrocarbon phases in oil recovery will be discussed.