HyINTEGER

January 1, 2016 – September 30, 2019

Dr. Viktor Reitenbach,
Prof. Dr. Leonhard Ganzer

The German federal government’s goal of increasing the share of wind energy in the German energy supply system while simultaneously avoiding associated weather-related fluctuations in electricity production requires, among other things, the conversion of energy into a medium that can be stored for longer periods. The production of hydrogen via electrolysis of water is considered central to this effort, but it also requires a fundamentally new approach to the storage of large quantities of hydrogen. One possible approach could be geological storage in depleted natural gas/oil reservoirs and existing natural gas storage facilities. However, it must be ensured that such sites can retain injected hydrogen or hydrogen-gas mixtures in a sustainable and safe manner to prevent uncontrolled escape of these gases to the surface. A particular vulnerability in many production and storage wells is the wellbore itself. This is because the materials used for this purpose (steels, wellbore cements, elastomer seals) may react with the pore fluids circulating there and with existing or injected substances under the elevated temperatures and pressures in the subsurface. Such corrosion, dissolution, or alteration processes can facilitate the (unintended) migration of gas or fluid phases, thereby compromising the safety and integrity of the storage facilities and causing environmental damage. The goal of HyINTEGER was therefore to investigate possible interactions between the natural and engineered components of underground storage facilities and thus assess the suitability of pore reservoirs for hydrogen storage. To this end, laboratory experiments were conducted under site-specific conditions with various gas phases (H2, H2-CH4, H2-CO2, CO2). Among other things, mineralogical-chemical, petrophysical, and microbiological parameters were considered, and their influence on reservoir properties, storage safety (tightness), and fluid flow within the reservoir and along the boreholes was investigated. This enabled an assessment of leakage risks during cyclic hydrogen injection and withdrawal, as well as the integrity of wells and storage facilities. Additionally, the area near the wellbore in particular was numerically modeled and simulated based on the microbiological experiments and the resulting models to better predict the effects of hydrogen storage in the future.

• Barganski, F.; Strobel, G.; Hagemann, B. (2019): Benchmark Study of Underground Hydrogen Storage in Eclipse. DGMK/ÖGEW Spring Conference.
• Eddaoui, N., Panfilov, M., Saïd, A. (2019): Enhancement of hydrogen storage through microbial accumulation: modeling and numerical simulations. 10th International Conference on Hydrogen Production, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, May 15, 2019.
• Feldmann, F.; Hagemann, B.; Ganzer, L.; Panfilov, M. (2016): Numerical simulation of hydrodynamic and gas mixing processes in underground hydrogen storage facilities. In Environmental Earth Sciences 75 (16), p. 1165. DOI: 10.1007/s12665-016-5948-z.
• Hagemann, B. (Ed.) (2018): Energy Transition: Hydrogen for the Storage of Renewable Energy.
• Hagemann, B., Panfilov, M., Ganzer, L. (2016a): Modeling bio-reactive transport in underground hydrogen storage facilities—Spatial separation of gaseous components. In: 15th European Conference on the Mathematics of Oil Recovery, ECMOR 2016. Amsterdam (Netherlands).
• Hagemann, B., Panfilov, M., Ganzer, L. (2016b): Multicomponent gas rising through water with dissolution in stratified porous reservoirs – Application to underground storage of H2 and CO2. In Journal of Natural Gas Science and Engineering 31, pp. 198–213. DOI: 10.1016/j.jngse.2016.03.019.
• Hagemann, B., Panfilov, M., Ganzer, L. (Eds.) (2017): Microbial metabolic lag in a bio-reactive transport model for underground hydrogen storage.
• Hagemann, B., Panfilov, M., Ganzer, L. (2018a): Field-Scale Modeling of Bio-Reactions During Underground Hydrogen Storage.
• Hagemann, B., Panfilov, M., Ganzer, L. (Ed.) (2018b): A numerical model for reactive transport coupled with microbial growth on Darcy scale.
• Henkel, S., Pudlo D., Enzmann, F., Reitenbach, V., Albrecht, D., Ganzer, L. & Gaupp, R. (2016): X-ray CT analyses, models, and numerical simulations: a comparison with petrophysical analyses in an experimental CO₂ study. In Solid Earth 7, pp. 917–927.
• Henkel, S., Pudlo, D., Schatzmann, S. (2016): CO2 storage simulation in an autoclave using samples from an Early Triassic sandstone reservoir. In Energy Procedia 114, pp. 5299–5310.
• Hogeweg, S.; Strobel, G.; Hagemann, B. (2019): Simulation of underground microbiological methanation in a conceptual well doublet system. DGMK/ÖGEW Spring Conference.
• Panfilov, M. (2019): Physicochemical fluid dynamics in porous media. Applications in geosciences and petroleum engineering. Weinheim: Wiley-VCH. Available online at https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Physicochemical+Fluid+Dynamics+in+Porous+Media:+Applications+in+Geosciences+and+Petroleum+Engineering-p-9783527806584 .
• Panfilov, M., Eddaoui, N. (2018): Microbiological underground methanation: principles, biochemical and hydrodynamic models, and self-organization phenomena. InterPore 10th Annual Meeting and Jubilee, New Orleans, USA, May 14, 2018.
• Pudlo, D., Henkel, S., Reitenbach, V., Albrecht, D., Ganzer, L.; Gaupp, R. (Eds.) (2016): Results from mineralogical, chemical, and geohydraulic investigations and the need for further research on underground hydrogen storage.
• Strobel, G.; Hagemann, B.; Ganzer, Leonhard (2019): History Matching of Bio-reactive Transport in an Underground Hydrogen Storage Field Case.