The main objective of this project is to identify, characterize, and model the main geological units and different rock-types of the Rio Bonito Formation of the onshore Paraná Sedimentary Basin, southeastern Brazil, with potential to safely store CO2 in quantities compatible with industry emissions with an emphasis on bioenergy, in order to contribute to reaching negative CO2 emissions by the ethanol plants in the State of São Paulo and neighbouring areas.
The project also aims to test the hypothesis that mineralization processes in sandstones with siliceous and carbonate cementation and with clay minerals filling the pores are effective systems for trapping CO2 in these reservoirs. Besides, shale, claystone, limestone and coal beds of the Rio Bonito Formation will be evaluated as potential geological reservoirs that can adsorb significant amounts of CO2 compatible with the quantity released in the ethanol production activities.
These reservoirs will be evaluated mainly by geological criteria to verify whether these formations have technological capabilities to operate as carbon stores and contribute to a better understanding of the conditions necessary for carbon sequestration associated with the bioenergy production.
Additionally, the project will provide the geochemical thermodynamics and kinetics properties on the potential mineralization pathways within the representative mineral composition in the formation.
This investigation will be assessed based on multiscale molecular simulations and experiments at a lab-scale, to build accurate models on reservoir-scale for CO2 mineralization.