Carbon dioxide sequestration in deep aquifers and depleted oilfields is a potential technical solution for reducing green-house gas release to the atmosphere: the gas containment relies on several trapping mechanisms (supercritical CO2, CO2(sc), dissolution together with slow water flows, mineral trapping) and on a low permeability cap-rock to prevent CO2(sc), which is less dense than the formation water, from leaking upwards. A leakproof cap-rock is thus essential to ensure the sequestration efficiency. It is also crucial for safety assessment to identify and assess potential alteration processes that may damage the cap-rock properties: chemical alteration, fracture reactivation, degradation of injection borehole seals, etc. The reactivity of the host-rock minerals with the supercritical CO2 fluid is one of the potential mechanisms, but it is altogether unknown. Reactivity tests have been carried out under such conditions, consisting of batch reactions between pure minerals and anhydrous supercritical CO2, or a two-phase CO2/H2O fluid at 200?°C and 105/160 bar. After 45 to 60 days, evidence of appreciable mineral-fluid reactivity was identified, including in the water-free experiments. For the mixed H2O/CO2 experiments, portlandite was totally transformed into calcite; anorthite displayed many dissolution patterns associated with calcite, aragonite, tridymite and smectite precipitations. For the anhydrous CO2 experiments, portlandite was totally carbonated to form calcite and aragonite; anorthite also displayed surface alteration patterns with secondary precipitation of fibrous calcite. To cite this article: O. Regnault et al., C. R. Geoscience 337 (2005).相似文献
Estuaries are productive and ecologically important ecosystems, incorporating environmental drivers from watersheds, rivers, and the coastal ocean. Climate change has potential to modify the physical properties of estuaries, with impacts on resident organisms. However, projections from general circulation models (GCMs) are generally too coarse to resolve important estuarine processes. Here, we statistically downscaled near-surface air temperature and precipitation projections to the scale of the Chesapeake Bay watershed and estuary. These variables were linked to Susquehanna River streamflow using a water balance model and finally to spatially resolved Chesapeake Bay surface temperature and salinity using statistical model trees. The low computational cost of this approach allowed rapid assessment of projected changes from four GCMs spanning a range of potential futures under a high CO2 emission scenario, for four different downscaling methods. Choice of GCM contributed strongly to the spread in projections, but choice of downscaling method was also influential in the warmest models. Models projected a ~2–5.5 °C increase in surface water temperatures in the Chesapeake Bay by the end of the century. Projections of salinity were more uncertain and spatially complex. Models showing increases in winter-spring streamflow generated freshening in the Upper Bay and tributaries, while models with decreased streamflow produced salinity increases. Changes to the Chesapeake Bay environment have implications for fish and invertebrate habitats, as well as migration, spawning phenology, recruitment, and occurrence of pathogens. Our results underline a potentially expanded role of statistical downscaling to complement dynamical approaches in assessing climate change impacts in dynamically challenging estuaries. 相似文献
This study focuses on the development of two GIS-based approaches that are used jointly to evaluate the groundwater resources associated with granular aquifers in shield environments. The first approach is a multi-criteria analysis (MCA) using an analytical hierarchic process (AHP) based on geological and hydrogeological data for ranking the probability of finding readily available groundwater resources in a specific territory. The second approach relies on GIS-based geometric calculations that were developed for evaluating the extent and volume of aquifers. The approaches are applied on a 100?×?100 m grid in a 185,000-km2 area corresponding to watersheds of the James Bay area in Quebec, Canada. The MCA-AHP approach revealed that the unconfined granular aquifers that present the highest aquifer potential (AP) are sparsely distributed and mostly associated with glaciofluvial formations such as the Harricana and Sakami moraines. The geometric calculations approach allowed for estimating that the total volume of groundwater stored in the unconfined granular aquifers reaches approximately 40 km3. When used jointly, the two approaches reveal that the shallow unconfined aquifers that require increased groundwater protection account for approximately 5% of the territory. In areas of confined granular aquifers, the highest APs are located in river valleys and lowlands. A sensitivity analysis conducted on the MCA-AHP approach revealed that the grid size does not significantly affect the results. Therefore, the approach was expanded northward, to a 490,000-km2 territory reaching the Ungava Bay area. The proposed method could be adapted and applied in other shield areas.
Hydrogeology Journal - Thanks to recent technological advances, hydrogeologists now have access to large amounts of data acquired in real time. Processing these data using traditional modelling... 相似文献
To analyze the grain size and depositional environment of the foreshore sediments, a study was undertaken on wave refraction along the wide sandy beaches of central Tamil Nadu coast. The nearshore waves approach the coast at 45° during the northeast(NE) monsoon, at 135° during the southwest(SW) monsoon and at 90° during the non-monsoon or fair-weather period with a predominant wave period of 8 and 10 s. A computer based wave refraction pattern is constructed to evaluate the trajectories of shoreward propagating waves along the coast in different seasons. The convergent wave rays during NE monsoon, leads to high energy wave condition which conveys a continuous erosion at foreshore region while divergent and inept condition of rays during the SW and non-monsoon, leads to moderate and less energy waves that clearly demarcates the rebuilt beach sediments through littoral sediment transport. The role of wave refraction in foreshore deposits was understood by grain size and depositional environment analysis. The presence of fine grains with the mixed population, during the NE monsoon reveals that the high energy wave condition and sediments were derived from beach and river environment. Conversely, the presence of medium grains with uniform population, during SW and non-monsoon attested less turbulence and sediments were derived from prolong propagation of onshore-offshore wave process.These upshots are apparently correlated with the in situ beach condition. On the whole, from this study it is understood that beaches underwent erosion during the NE monsoon and restored its original condition during the SW and non-monsoon seasons that exposed the stability of the beach and nearshore condition. 相似文献