Pore-scale modelling on hydrogen transport in porous media: Implications for hydrogen storage in saline aquifers

Hydrogen energy has tremendous potential as a clean fuel in this energy transition. To build up the full-scale hydrogen energy supply chain, large-scale hydrogen storage is of vital importance. Underground hydrogen storage in saline aquifers has been perceived as an important means to achieve large-scale hydrogen storage. Therefore, we investigated hydrogen transport in pore network in a sandstone porous media at strongly water-wet and weakly water-wet (hydrogen-wet). We performed direct numerical simulation through volume of fluid method to investigate the transport of hydrogen at pore-scale under different wetting conditions with input hydrogen-rock physics data from literature. Our results showed that during primary drainage process (hydrogen injection for storage purpose), increasing hydrogen wetting decreased snap-off effect, enabling a greater pore space for hydrogen storage. During primary imbibition process (hydrogen extraction), increasing hydrogen wetting promoted the size and stability of hydrogen clusters, which is unfavorable to hydrogen extraction process. Given the significant high interfacial tension between brine and hydrogen and low viscous force of hydrogen, snap-off effect dominates the flow in both hydrogen injection and extraction process regardless of wetting conditions. This physical process causes the recovery factor even below 20%. We therefore suggest that storing hydrogen in depleted gas reservoirs under irreducible water saturation would have much less risks in hydrogen trapping during extraction process.