PANACEA – Predicting and monitoring the long-term behaviour of CO₂ injected in deep geological formations

The overall goal of PANACEA is to develop the tools required for the transition from research and development activities to large-scale, industrial, deployment of CO₂ storage. This requires a scientifically based technological approach consisting of five main inter-related objectives:

1. Identify and quantify the factors responsible for the long-term stability of the stored CO₂. This requires a clear understanding of the dynamics of the injected CO₂, the chemical interactions, and the evolution in time of its partitioning as a free phase (residual or continuous), dissolved or mineralized.
2. Provide measures for the assessment of the integrity and vulnerability of the reservoir (storage formation and cap-rock) and wells that penetrate it, to the CO₂ stream. These depend on the degree of leakage of the stored CO₂, either through the cap-rock, faults and or through wells, material parameters, reservoir geometry and boundary conditions.
3. Quantify the impact of the stored CO₂ on adjacent subsurface reservoirs. Changes in the reservoir (in pressure, pH, and chemical reactions) may lead to unwanted migration of brines and release on pollutants trapped in the rock (such as heavy metals) etc. in freshwater reservoirs.
4. Identify and develop reliable monitoring, measurement and verification (MMV) technologies having the capacity to capture relevant information on the long-term behavior of the stored CO₂ both at the near and far field.
5. Achieve an adequate degree of cooperation with projects and initiatives in order to allow the collection of data necessary for validating the investigations and to allow the dissemination of findings (particularly the EU large scale CCS demonstration projects and the FP7-CO₂CARE project).