Reservoir-Scale Caprock Seal Integrity for CO2 and Hydrogen Storage: A Critical Review of Upscaling Methods and Uncertainty Propagation

Raymond Oluwadolapo Aderoju (), Mojibola Esther Afolabi () and Joy Ojodunwene Onuh ()

International Journal of Innovative Science and Research Technology (IJISRT), 2026, vol. 11, issue 08, 2291-2303

Abstract: Reservoir-scale caprock seal integrity during geological CO2 and underground hydrogen storage (UHS) depends on processes occurring well below the scale at which a safety assessment typically treats mineral dissolution and precipitation, capillary entry pressure at grain contacts, and stress-dependent pore structure. This review addresses one question precisely: how is finer-scale hydromechanical alteration translated into defensible continuum-scale parameters and reservoir-scale predictions, and what information is lost in that translation? We distinguish pore-scale observation, corescale measurement, constitutive closure, and reservoir-scale prediction as categorically different evidence types rather than treating them as interchangeable. Published experimental and simulation studies consistently document localized, order-ofmagnitude permeability increases along preferential dissolution pathways at small scale; the small number of studies that have attempted the full upscaling chain against an actual site report comparatively small net bulk change over decades to a century. We treat this as an open scale-dependence problem rather than a resolved discrepancy, and evaluate candidate explanations, including volume averaging, mineral buffering, connectivity and percolation thresholds, and flow-regime dependence via the Damköhler and Peclet numbers, against what published evidence demonstrates versus what remains a hypothesis. CO2 and H2 are treated as physically distinct problems, compared on molecular size, interfacial tension, capillary entry pressure, and reactivity, before their reservoir-scale outcomes are compared. We propose a physics-consistent workflow connecting characterization to reservoir-scale seal-integrity prediction with explicit uncertainty propagation and identify where physics-informed machine learning could prospectively, not presently, contribute. Claims not supported by verified evidence are flagged explicitly rather than filled with plausible-sounding literature.

Keywords: Caprock Integrity; Reservoir-Scale Upscaling; Seal Integrity Assessment; Representative Elementary Volume; Uncertainty Propagation; Carbon Storage; Underground Hydrogen Storage. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ijisrt.com/reservoirscale-caprock-seal ... ertainty-propagation (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cvr:ijisrt:2026:08:ijisrt26aug944

DOI: 10.38124/ijisrt/26aug944

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Innovative Science and Research Technology (IJISRT) from IJISRT Publication
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Rahul Goyel ().