The current mainstream monitoring techniques measure seismic waves that travel underground because these waves are affected by the injection of CO2 and these changes are used to track where the CO2 is going says the project’s lead investigator, Dr. Bernard Giroux, of Institut national de la recherché scientifique (INRS).

Carbon Management Canada (CMC), a federal Network of Centres of Excellence that supports research to reduce CO2 emissions in the fossil energy industry as well as from other large stationary emitters, is providing Giroux and his team $450,000 over three years. In its 2012 round of funding, CMC is awarding $3.75 million to Canadian researchers working on eight different projects. The awards were made after a rigorous, international, peer-reviewed process.

“The rock contains water or oil or gas and we are replacing that with CO2, which has different physical properties. The injection process also changes the pressure and that can have a strong influence on the overall properties of the rock. Thus, seismic properties are both affected by changes in fluid and pressure,” says Giroux.

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Source: Storage, Dec  15  2012 (Carbon Capture Journal)