Muon tomography for the monitoring of

stored carbon

Muon Sources WorkshopHuddersfield

12th – 13th January 2015

Jon Gluyas

and

Lee F. Thompson

UK Policy on Carbon Capture

One aspect of this is capturing and storing CO2 ….

credit: www.gov.uk

Carbon Capture and Storage

credit: www.nationalgrid.com

1-3

km

100+ km

Potential CO2 storage sites

The UK is fortunate and has access to any hundreds of potential CO2 storage sites including >400 depleted oil and gas fields and 100s large saline aquifers

CO2 storage monitoring Successful capture and storage isn’t the end of the

problem

EU legislation is likely to require less than 1% leakage per 1000 years

Monitoring will be required

Costs of monitoring will need to factored in

http://www.co2captureproject.org/operation.html

Monitoring TechnologiesMarine

4d seismicElectromagnetic

surveys

Land4d seismicInsarCO2 seep

detection

6

(InSAR data from Rutqvist et al.,

2010)

(Chadwick et al., 2010)

4-D Seismic detection costs Assumes £1M per “shot” (some estimates as high as £5M) Costs for 1 storage site – up to 150 may be developed No inflation

Every year to

25 years

Every 5 years 25 to 100

years

Every 10 years 100 to

200 years

Every 100 years 200 to 1000 years

Injection No injection

CCS monitoring4d seismic surveys are not the optimal tool

for CCS monitoring, in particular theyare episodic – what happens between surveysdo not measure CO2 density directly

(measures acoustic contrast, f)

An ideal monitoring methodology would be inexpensivecontinuouspassivedirectly sensitive to CO2 density last for hundreds of years

Are there alternative technologies that can address some of these issues??

Muon Tomography - Techniques

Muon Tomography (Attenuation Method)

Muon Radiography

Muon Tomography (Scattering Method)

Overburden

Muon Detectors

Muon Tomography – Track RecordExamples of previous

work in the field:

imaging magma chambers

Image of Mount Asama, Japan (Tanaka et al)

Muon Flux SimulationsInitial studies (2010)

indicates that by instrumenting 1000 m2 and taking data for 1 year then 0.4% mean volume density variations (7% pore volume) can be measured at 1km depth

Monitoring subsurface CO2 emplacement and security of storage using muon tomography V.A. Kudryavtsev et al., International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control 11 (2012) 21–24

Muon Tomography for CCS Monitoring

Muon tomography offers a monitoring tool that is: Continuous – some methods are episodic, what

happens between measurements? Passive Directly sensitive to CO2 density – some methods

do not measure CO2 density directly Capable of delivering useful data for many years

cost effective

but there are challenges … Need to instrument below/around the volume of

interest Restricted borehole geometry not well-suited Elevated temperatures

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CCS consortium

Awarded a ~£1.5M grant from DECC and Premier Oil Other funding from STFC, University of Sheffield

Work Package StructureWP1: Muon

detector design and

construction

WP2: Physical and chemical models of CO2 repositories

WP3: Muon transport and

detection modelling

WP4: Muon trajectory methods

WP5/6: Detector tests and borehole deployment

WP7: Adoption and

commercialistion

Geological Modelling

Hewett field – a candidate CO2 storage site

Muon Flux Simulations Muon transport simulations are being developed to test

the sensitivity of the technique

Using GEANT4 (standard tracking code for particle physics) for muon interactions and to model the overburden

For example, in the above a more realistic simulation results from assuming that the CO2 is confined to a volume and taking the relative parts of the ‘CO2-injected’ and ‘No-CO2’ simulations accordingly

No-CO2 CO2-injected

Muon Flux Simulations Muon flux simulations have been performed in Geant4 for

three scenarios: no-CO2, nominal-CO2 and extreme-CO2

with narrow and wide angle injection plumes

A statistically significant change in flux after 5% of a year is predicted for wide angle injection. More statistics are needed for narrow angle injection studies

Towards a “Borehole Detector” Detecting elementary

particles such as muons requires detectors

These detectors rely on the muons interacting with some medium and leaving a trace behind Charge Light

Avoid gaseous and liquid detectors for longevity reasons

Use solid plastic scintillator

Main challenge is the geometry – position along the bar requires accurate (sub nanosecond) timing

Timing Measurements “Trigger” on cosmic

rays Read out single bar Look at standard

deviation of timing difference

Promising results Standard deviation

of order 0.36 ns (3.6x10-10s)

Equivalent to a few centimetres in z co-ordinate

Borehole Detector Prototype

Muon Experiments at Boulby The Boulby Science Lab is

situated ~1.5km underground and is proving an invaluable testing ground

The mine also has (now disused) tunnels running out under the North Sea

Allows an important “proof of principle” experiment which will look at changes in overburden

Aims to observe the changes in overburden (density) from the North Sea tides at -764m in the Boulby mine

Cross coast boundary (~200m cliff drop, 50-200m depth sea)

“Muon tides” Experiment

Homeland Security

Large area muon chambers built under contract with AWE Used in conjunction with another detector type (drift chamber) to

look for rogue fissile materials at ports, etc. Currently exploring possibilities with AWE and NNL for

applications to imaging at Sellafield

Conclusions Muon tomography may prove a useful complementary tool to

other technologies for the monitoring of carbon storage

There are obvious challenges: Designing and operating effective muon detectors in the

constrained borehole geometry Elevated temperatures in the borehole will clearly make this a

difficult environment to work in

“Proof of principle” work is taking place Plastic scintillator-based borehole detector Boulby “muon tides” detectors for overburden measurement

Next steps Plans to operate the detector in a geothermal borehole in

Newcastle

There are other potentially interesting applications of muon tomography