OpenGoSim wins funding to implement a new modelling approach towards CO₂ Storage in a collaboration with Imperial College, Cambridge University, bp, Storegga and Drax Power.

 

The backing of almost £1m comes from the UK Government’s Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy’s (BEIS) £20 million CCUS Innovation 2.0 programme, funded through the Net Zero Innovation Portfolio (NZIP), which is aimed at accelerating the deployment of next-generation carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) technology in the UK so that it can deploy at scale by 2030.

The researchers’ approach, known as StrataTrapper, was developed by Imperial College London and the University of Cambridge in collaboration with industry partners OpenGoSim, bp, Drax Power, and Storegga.

Based on fluid dynamics research, StrataTrapper is software designed to help industry reduce the risks and costs associated with CO₂ storage. CO₂ storage is a vital component of CCUS – a technology that removes carbon from the atmosphere and could help industry transition to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. However it can be costly and includes risks like unexpected rates of plume migration, and the CO₂ approaching potential leakage pathways.

Imperial College technique provides a method for upscaling heterogeneities at centimetre scale that can impact significantly the CO₂ flow pathway after injection. The University of Cambridge has developed innovative models to quickly estimate the CO₂ distribution before performing reservoir simulations.

Thanks to this funding, OpenGoSim will implement the new modelling approaches developed by Imperial College and Cambridge University on its reservoir simulation software package dedicated to CO₂ Storage. The applicability of the new technology will be demonstrated on the Endurance CO₂ storage site in the southern North Sea, and the East Mey Site in the central and northern North Sea.

The software components belonging to the core simulator will be open source, while the utilities to control the software package from a simple user interface will be implemented in Stratus, the OpenGoSim proprietary front end.

The project will also add Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) support to the OGS simulator, which will speed up numerical tests to validate the new modelling techniques, while increasing the overall computational performance.

 

About the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy

• Leading economy-wide transformation by backing enterprise and long-term growth, generating cheaper, cleaner, homegrown energy and unleashing the UK as a science superpower through innovation.
• This funding has been made available from the government’s £1 billion Net Zero Innovation Portfolio, which looks to accelerate the commercialisation of low-carbon technologies and systems.

 

About OpenGoSim

OpenGoSim is a company specialising in the development of reservoir engineering software for subsurface CO₂ storage. With clients at the forefront of the carbon capture and storage technology, and a strong innovation culture, OpenGoSim will provide accurate and easy to use modelling tools for the next generation of reservoir engineers, who will be facing the new challenges posed by the energy transition.