Yongliang
Yan
*ab,
Tohid N.
Borhani
c,
Sai Gokul
Subraveti
d,
Kasturi Nagesh
Pai
d,
Vinay
Prasad
d,
Arvind
Rajendran
d,
Paula
Nkulikiyinka
a,
Jude Odianosen
Asibor
a,
Zhien
Zhang
e,
Ding
Shao
f,
Lijuan
Wang
g,
Wenbiao
Zhang
f,
Yong
Yan
g,
William
Ampomah
h,
Junyu
You
hi,
Meihong
Wang
j,
Edward J.
Anthony
a,
Vasilije
Manovic
a and
Peter T.
Clough
*a
aEnergy and Power Theme, Cranfield University, Bedfordshire MK43 0AL, UK. E-mail: yongliang.yan@newcastle.ac.uk; p.t.clough@cranfield.ac.uk
bMaterials, Concept and Reaction Engineering (MatCoRE) Group, School of Engineering, Newcastle University, Merz Court, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK
cSchool of Engineering, Division of Chemical Engineering, University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, WV1 1LY, UK
dDepartment of Chemical and Materials Engineering, Donadeo Innovation Centre for Engineering, University of Alberta, 9211-116 Street NW, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 1H9, Canada
eDepartment of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 26506, USA
fSchool of Control and Computer Engineering, North China Electric Power University, Beijing, 102206, P. R. China
gSchool of Engineering, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NT, UK
hPetroleum Recovery Research Centre, New Mexico Tech, Socorro NM, 87801, USA
iSchool of Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering, Chongqing University of Science and Technology, Chongqing, 401331, China
jDepartment of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S1 3JD, UK
First published on 1st November 2021
Carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) will play a critical role in future decarbonisation efforts to meet the Paris Agreement targets and mitigate the worst effects of climate change. Whilst there are many well developed CCUS technologies there is the potential for improvement that can encourage CCUS deployment. A time and cost-efficient way of advancing CCUS is through the application of machine learning (ML). ML is a collective term for high-level statistical tools and algorithms that can be used to classify, predict, optimise, and cluster data. Within this review we address the main steps of the CCUS value chain (CO2 capture, transport, utilisation, storage) and explore how ML is playing a leading role in expanding the knowledge across all fields of CCUS. We finish with a set of recommendations for further work and research that will develop the role that ML plays in CCUS and enable greater deployment of the technologies.
Broader contextCarbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) is well recognised to play a critical role in future decarbonisation efforts to meet Paris Agreement goals and net zero emissions targets. Machine learning (ML) is a collective term for high-level statistical tools and algorithms that can be used to classify, predict, optimise, and cluster data. ML has been applied to CCUS technologies as a powerful tool to accelerate their development. This work presents a state-of-the-art review of ML applications in CO2 capture, transport, storage, and utilisation, and provides perspectives for the field. In this manuscript, the authors provide a set of recommendations for further work and research that will help develop the role that ML plays in CCUS and enable greater deployment of CCUS technologies. |
The recent COVID-19 pandemic has provided the opportunity to foresee a ‘new normal’ where lifestyles can be radically different, and a sense of national contribution can be understood. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to governments around the world utilising this change as an opportunity to “Build Back Better” with “Green Growth” and a “Green Industrial Revolution”.4–8 Part of these recovery plans involve the deployment of CCUS at significant scales in the coming decades to meet net zero pledges and limit warming to 1.5 °C. CCUS is absolutely crucial for the decarbonisation of many sectors that cannot be decarbonised by other process changes (e.g., cement, iron and steel). The roll out of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is planned to achieve 10 Mt CO2 captured per year by 2030 in the UK, with other similar commitments globally.9 In addition, all negative emissions technologies (NET), such as direct air capture (DAC) and Biomass Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) technologies require the deployment of CCUS. These technologies allow otherwise stranded fossil fuel in the power sector to continue to be used at a much higher level and reduces the abatement requirements of fossil fuels (including natural gas) to a 28–33% level, instead of a 46–57% level while staying below a 2 °C temperature target.10 Moreover, there is also a growing awareness in the EU and countries like Canada that meeting net zero emissions by 205011 and 2060 for China,12 unconventional methods such as DAC will be required.13 A similar view is developing in the USA, that negative emissions technologies are required to meet current climate goals by 2050 and without them, the US net zero initiative will fail.14 Moreover, the idea that a 100% wind, water and solar scenarios are even achievable by 2050 has also received challenges.15 In light of this, more affordable CCUS, is not just desirable, but also essential. However, a general review of CCUS technology and its roll out is available from others, so the authors will not go into details, explaining the basic mechanics of CCUS processes.16
The use of machine learning (ML) has increased for a multitude of applications due to the growth in computing power in recent years, this is true for CCUS applications as well. ML offers the potential to identify links between data/results that aren’t readily identifiable, and it also provides alternative lower computing cost pathways. Within the field of CCUS, ML has begun to be utilised to evaluate new CO2 sorbents and oxygen carrier materials,17 simulate, control and operate capture processes,18–23 simplify process economics, predict CO2 solubilities in solvents and CO2 capture capacities in adsorbents,24–26 improve the accuracy of multiphase flowmeters used for CO2 pipelines,27 and predict leaks from CO2 wells;28 each with the aim of advancing the field of CCUS in a cost and time effective manner. Meanwhile, it is also worth noting that ML is data-driven technology, and its performance usually depends on the size and quality of database. In some areas of CCUS, the available data size can be limited to only a few dozens of datapoints and some of the raw data may not even be published openly, which will limit researchers in applying ML in those areas. Moreover, ML is a powerful tool for complex and nonlinear problems. It may not be suitable for applications that can be easily solved by numerical methods. Another big challenge for ML is it is difficult to extract the new knowledge from ML models to form general conclusions and scientific laws. Researchers in CCUS should consider what new information they can extract from ML models before applying ML in their research. Nevertheless, ML in CCUS is still relatively new and there is much yet to be studied.
Past studies in ML in CCUS are scattered within the literature and there has been no previous attempt to reconcile this information, gathered along the entire CO2 supply chain, systemically into a critical review and summary and set out a clear pathway forward. A detailed and systematic critical analysis of previous research will lead to an acceleration of CCUS commercialisation and an expansion of ML in all areas of CCUS, this forms the main motivation behind this review.
The dependence of ML modelling on data presents some challenges in terms of availability, quantity as well as quality. Given this dependence, if the sourced data contains human biases and prejudices, then the decision of models developed from such data may inherit such biases, consequently leading to unfair and wrong decisions. Closely associated with the aspect of data is the challenge of dimensionality (the curse of dimensionality). This refers to all the problems that arise when working with data in higher dimensions (large number of data features) that did not exist in lower dimensions.33 This leads to overfitting resulting in poor performance of the model. In order to avoid this, dimensionality reduction, which is the transformation of high-dimensional data into a meaningful representation of reduced dimensionality is carried out.34 This data pre-processing improves the performance of the data, reduces training time and computational resources as well as noise removal.35 Dimensionality reduction methods include: Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Factor Analysis, Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), Multi-dimensional Scaling (MDS), Isometric Feature Mapping (Isomap), t-distributed Stochastic Neighbour Embedding (t-SNE) and auto-encoders.33,34
ML model interpretation is another major challenge of deploying ML. This is as a result of the black-box nature of many ML models in which humans are unable to explain the decision-making logic of the ML model despite obtaining high predictive accuracy. This crucial weakness impacts not only on ethics but also on accountability, trust, transparency, safety and industrial liability.36 To address this limitation and given the importance of openness in scientific research, several approaches have been reported with some even deployed at the cost of sacrificing accuracy. Some of these methods and techniques include; decision tree, feature importance, sensitivity analysis, partial dependence plots, activation maximization, explainable neural network (XNN), local interpretable model-agnostic explanation (LIME), shapley additive exPlanations (SHAP), Deep Learning Important FeaTures (DeepLIFT) explanation method and Treeinterpreter.36,37 Key factors to consider in building interpretable ML models have also been reported to include but not be limited to the degree of white-box modelling, data visualisation, usability, model visualisation, variable importance, accuracy, fairness, and sensitivity residuality.36,38 In the application of ML to CCUS, it is recommended to aim for the use and development of interpretable models with competitive levels of predictive accuracy.
Fig. 1 presents the types of ML and respective areas of application. There are three main types of ML: supervised, unsupervised and reinforcement learning. The supervised ML, which is the most commonly used of the three is usually applied when the input–output data is known. It involves training the ML models to learn the relationship between the given inputs and associated output values.39 If the available dataset consists of only input values (no labels), unsupervised ML can be used in an attempt to identify trends, structure, patterns or clustering in the input data.40 Reinforcement learning is a ML technique that enables an agent to learn in an interactive environment by trial and error using feedback from its actions and experiences.41 The execution of any of the types of ML can be done through the application of the appropriate algorithm. A brief description of common ML algorithms is presented in Table 1.
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Fig. 1 Types and applications of ML.42 |
Algorithm name | Task type | Description |
---|---|---|
Linear regression | Regression | By fitting a linear model with coefficients, this algorithm correlates each data feature to the output, thus assisting in predicting future values |
Logistic regression | Classification | A classification algorithm that predicts the likelihood of a dependent variable (usually binary) belonging to a category |
Decision tree | Regression and classification | This interpretable algorithm performs by splitting values of data features into branches at decision nodes until a final decision output is established |
Naïve Bayes | Regression and classification | This algorithm is based on the Bayes' theorem which updates the prior knowledge of an event with the independent probability of each feature that can affect the event |
Support Vector Machines (SVMs) | Regression, classification, and outlier detection | This algorithm operates by transforming the required data and determining the optimal boundary (hyperplane) between the various outputs |
Random forest | Regression and classification | The algorithm is an ensemble of decision trees characterised by improved accuracy. It operates by generating a multitude of decision trees and uses either the modal vote or average prediction for classification or regression tasks respectively |
Artificial Neural Network (ANN) | Regression, classification, and clustering | This algorithm which is modelled after the biological neurons of the brain consists of several layers with interconnected artificial neurons performing various data transformations to obtain the required output |
K-means clustering | Clustering | This centroid-based algorithm clusters unlabelled data points by their similarity of characteristics determined by the model without human interference |
Hierarchical clustering | Clustering | This algorithm splits clusters along a hierarchical tree to form a classification system |
Gaussian mixture model | Clustering | This unsupervised algorithm clusters data by estimating the density distribution of the dataset |
AdaBoost | Regression and classification | This is an ensemble algorithm that combines multiple weak algorithms to obtain an improved output |
Principal component analysis (PCA) | Dimension reduction | This algorithm is often used to reduce the dimensionality of large data sets without distorting its characteristics (though it is not strictly a ML algorithm in its own right) |
Other ML algorithms include K-nearest neighbour, density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise (DBSCAN), recommender systems, genetic algorithm, gradient boosting trees and particle swarm algorithms. Given the numerous types of ML models, the choice of model to be deployed in a particular application is very much dependent on factors such as task type, type and structure of expected output, type and size of data, accuracy-interpretability consideration, number of data features, linearity, available computational time as well as model complexity.39 It is important to note that in many applications, multiple algorithms are usually combined (referred to as ensemble algorithms) to improve model performance accuracy and robustness. Information and learning resources on ML are readily available and accessible on various websites and online platforms. Table 2 presents some publicly accessible tools and resources for general purpose ML and CCUS related application.
Name | Description | URL |
---|---|---|
General-purpose machine-learning frameworks40 | ||
Caret | Package for ML in R | https://topepo.github.io/caret |
Deeplearning4j | Distributed deep learning for Java | https://deeplearning4j.org |
H2O.ai | Machine-learning platform written in Java that can be imported as a Python or R library | https://h2o.ai |
Keras | High-level neural-network API written in Python | https://keras.io |
Mlpack | Scalable machine-learning library written in C++ | https://mlpack.org |
Scikit-learn | Machine-learning and data-mining member of the scikit family of toolboxes built around the SciPy Python library | https://scikit-learn.org |
Weka | Collection of machine-learning algorithms and tasks written in Java | https://cs.waikato.ac.nz/ml/weka |
TensorFlow | An open source for numerical and large-scale ML | https://www.tensorflow.org |
ML tools for CCUS | ||
COMBO | Python library with emphasis on scalability and efficiency | https://github.com/tsudalab/combo |
DeepChem | Python library for deep learning of chemical systems | https://deepchem.io |
MatMiner | Python library for assisting ML in materials science | https://hackingmaterials.github.io/matminer |
NOMAD | Collection of tools to explore correlations in materials datasets | https://analytics-toolkit.nomad-coe.eu |
Silicone v1.0.0 | An open-source Python package for inferring missing emissions data for climate change research | https://github.com/GranthamImperial/silicone |
Carboncalc | Tools to calculate growth statistics for individual urban trees such as for estimating carbon storage | https://github.com/adhollander/carboncalc |
Fair | Python package that takes emissions of greenhouse gases, aerosol and ozone precursors, and converts these into greenhouse gas concentrations, radiative forcing and temperature change | https://pypi.org/project/fair |
pyGAPS | A Python framework for adsorption data analysis and isotherm fitting | https://github.com/pauliacomi/pyGAPS |
As many of the models used to predict the physical properties are experimental based models, there is considerable error and deviation in the prediction of different parameters that directly affect the results of the process model.45 It should be noted that in the case of dynamic simulation which contains partial differential equations (PDE), the initial points to solve the problem is a critical aspect of the modelling job. Finding these can be a very tedious and time-consuming process.
Despite all these above-mentioned weaknesses and drawbacks, applying ML to model and optimise the solvent-based carbon capture is attracting increasing attention. Methods like ANN, adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system or adaptive network-based fuzzy inference system (ANFIS), support vector regression (SVR), radial basis function (RBF), and genetic programming (GP) can examine complex interaction between inputs to the model and predict the target (usually CO2 capture levels and rate of absorption of CO2). It should be noted that as experimental process data acquisition is frequently inadequate for various types of solvents, the majority of the researchers first developed a first principle mathematical model in a process simulator (such as Aspen Plus®, Aspen HYSYS®, and gPROMS®) and collected the data from that model. Then the collected data are used to develop the ML-based model. The ML-based models can predict the required targets with acceptable accuracy and be used easily for future studies.46,47
Nuchitprasittichai and Cremaschi48 used response surface methodology (RSM) and ANN to minimise the capture cost of CO2 using different amines. RSM uses local searches to estimate an appropriate direction to reduce the objective function while ANN uses simulation to build a global surrogate model of the objective function over the entire decision space and solves the optimization problem using a global solver.
The structure of the algorithm in this study is presented in Fig. 2. The first step of the algorithm is the determination of the appropriate sample size to construct the ANN, the second step is optimization by using the constructed ANN with the sample size obtained from the first step as the objective function. The results showed that the number of simulations, the minimum CO2 capture cost, and the percent error, for both methods were close to each other. The data required for the study was provided from an Aspen HYSYS® simulation.
![]() | ||
Fig. 2 Structure of the algorithm to perform optimisation.48 |
Li et al.49 considered different parameters namely inlet flue gas flow rate, CO2 concentration in inlet flue gas, the pressure of the flue gas, the temperature of the flue gas, lean solvent flow rate, monoethanolamine (MEA) concentration and the temperature of lean solvent as input to predict the CO2 capture rate and CO2 capture level using bootstrap aggregated neural networks. The required data to develop ML models were extracted from first principle steady-state and dynamic models developed in gPROMS®. It should be noted that both absorber and stripper were included in their model. Zhan et al.50 studied the simultaneous absorption of CO2 and H2S in a mixture of N-methyl diethanolamine (MDEA) and piperazine (PZ) in a rotating packed bed (RPB) experimentally. The authors developed an ANN model to predict the absorption efficiencies of H2S and CO2 and mass-transfer coefficient (KGa).
Shalaby et al.51 considered a fine tree, Matern Gaussian Process Regression (GPR), rational quadratic GPR, squared exponential GPR and feed-forward ANN models to predict the different output from CO2 capture unit using MEA solution. Reboiler duty, condenser duty, reboiler pressure, flow rate, temperature, and the pressure of the flue gas were considered as inputs to the models and the system energy requirements, capture rate, and the purity of condenser outlet stream were the output of the models. The required data were obtained from the gPROMS process builder and the results of the models indicated high prediction accuracy.
After the development of the models, the authors developed a non-linear programming (NLP) problem and solved it using sequential quadratic programming algorithm (SQP) and genetic algorithm optimization on the surrogate model to determine the optimal operating conditions. This study showed that ML-based methods could be used to model and optimise the CO2 capture unit appropriately. Wu et al.23 developed an intelligent predictive controller (IPC) for a large-scale solvent-based post-combustion CO2 capture process, and an ANN model was trained to predict the dynamics of the CO2 capture process. The results indicated that the IPC demonstrated fast control of the CO2 capture level and reduced the fluctuations in re-boiler's temperature significantly.
On the other hand, VLE modelling for the CO2 capture system is a challenging task because of the non-ideal nature of the liquid phase (due to the existence of different types of interactions between ions and molecules), lack of accurate model parameters as well as the availability and quality of solubility data. In addition, an equation of state (EOS) such as Peng–Robinson, SAFT, and Soave–Redlich–Kwong is necessary. Furthermore, an activity coefficient-based model for instance Electrolyte NRTL, Wilson, and Extended UNIQUAC is also required to do the VLE calculations. The programming and implementation of these thermodynamic models, EOS and activity coefficients models is a complex and time-consuming job.44
Baghban et al.53 compared the predictive capability of four ML models to evaluate the CO2 solubility in 67 ionic liquids (ILs). They used the Least Square Support Vector Machine (LSSVM), ANFIS, Multi-Layer Perceptron Artificial Neural Network (MLP-ANN), and Radial Basis Function Artificial Neural Network (RBF-ANN). The solubility is considered as a function of different parameters such as operational temperature, pressure accompanied with the properties of ILs including the critical temperature, critical pressure and, acentric factor (ω). LSSVM model showed the best statistical performance in comparison to other methods.
Ghiasi and Mohammadi55 used a Classification and Regression Tree (CART) method in modelling CO2 solubility in different ILs as a function of system's temperature and pressure and properties of ILs including critical temperature, critical pressure, and acentric factor. A tree-based model was developed using 5330 experimental data points of CO2 solubility in 66 different ILs. Findings reveal that the proposed model's outcomes are in excellent agreement with the corresponding experimental values. The presented model shows an average absolute relative deviation equal to 0.04% and provides considerably better estimations than the previously published ML based models.
Garg et al.56 studied the CO2 solubility in aqueous sodium salt of L-phenylalanine (Na-Phe) for different concentrations, temperatures and CO2 pressure range, experimentally. Kent–Eisenberg and ANN models were used to model and correlate the solubility data. ANN showed better results in comparison to Kent–Eisenberg thermodynamic models.
Li et al.57 compared several thermodynamic models (Kent–Eisenberg,52 Austgen,58 Hu–Chakma,59 Liu et al.60) with two types of ANN models (back-propagation neural network (BPNN) and (RBF-NN)) to predict the CO2 solubility in 3-dimethylamino-1-propanol (3DMA1P) solution for different operating conditions. The authors reported that absolute average deviation (ADD) of thermodynamic models were almost three times more than the ADD of ANN models. Babamohammadi et al.61 presented experimental data of VLE for CO2 absorption in the mixture of MEA and glycerol and then used these data to develop the ANN model to predict the VLE data. Yarveicy et al.62 presented an extra trees model to predict the CO2 loading in different chemical solvents using solubility data from the literature. The results of the extra trees model were compared to LSSVM, MLP-ANN, ANFIS, and RBF-ANN models in the literature. The authors reported a coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.9993 and an average absolute relative deviation in percent (AARD%) of 0.15 for this model. Soroush et al.63 applied ANFIS to develop a precise temperature-dependent ML model to correlate the CO2 loading of amino acid salt solutions for different types of amino acids. This model was used to perform sensitivity analysis as well.
Property = f (parameters/descriptors) | (1) |
Quantitative-structure property/activity relationship (QSPR/QSAR) is a modelling method to predict different physical and thermodynamic properties using the knowledge about the chemical structure of the molecules.69 These physio-chemical structure and properties are known as descriptors and provide the basis for mathematically linking and explaining a molecules/materials activity or property. A large family of models have been developed to predict the properties for solvent-based CO2 capture systems based QSPR approach. Different modelling (regression) approaches are applicable in QSPR/QSAR studies which are different from linear techniques like multivariate linear regression (MLR), partial least-squares regression (PLSR), and principal component regression (PCR) to the nonlinear techniques such as ANN, GP, SVMs, and ANFIS. In QSPR studies especially when dealing with MLR method, different types of algorithms from classic algorithms such as stepwise forward selection or evolutionary or metaheuristic algorithms such as genetic algorithm (GA), particle swarm optimization (PSO), simulated annealing, and ant colony and so on, have been used in descriptor selection step to reduce the number of descriptors and keep the most influential ones in the prediction of property under study.
Dataset | T/K | P/MPa | Water/wt% |
---|---|---|---|
CO2 solubility (mass fraction of CO2) | 293–395 | 0.015–9.685 | 0–1.6 |
Density (g cm−3) | 278–391 | 0.1–173 | 0–2.68 |
Viscosity (mPa s) | 273–388 | 0.1–175 | 0 |
Heat capacity (J K−1 mol−1) | 283–353 | 0.1–100 | 0 |
The results showed that the least accurate model was SVM with an AARD% of 15.13. The squared exponential GPR model was the most accurate coefficient of determination of 0.992 and AARD% of 0.14 for testing data. Wu et al.78 collected a total of 160 experimental data points for Henry's law constant of CO2 in 32 imidazole ILs. Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP), RF and MLR were used to develop the models to predict Henry's law constant. The results of the modelling showed good statistical parameters for all three models for the test set. The correlation coefficient mean absolute error (MAE), and RMSE for the MLP model were 0.98, 0.4818 and 0.65 respectively. The authors considered temperature, CO2 partial pressure and water wt% as input of the model (descriptors) which all of them have physical meaning here.
![]() | ||
Fig. 3 The concept of the approach presented by Venkatraman et al.:84 (a) data collection, (b) ML calibration, (c) combinatorial library design and enumeration, (d) prediction of properties by ML, (e) experimental validation of selected candidates, (f) property-based filtering, (g) theoretical evaluation, (h) potential applications. |
Wang et al.85 presented a strategy to select the best ionic liquids and apply them in the process simulator to absorb CO2. Their strategy contains four main steps. The first part is related to the target system, in the second part absorption, selectivity and desorption for each IL are calculated using the COSMO-RS model. In the next step, a prediction model is applied to predict viscosity and another one for predicting melting point to find the optimal ILs which these models are developed using the SVM method. In the final step, the applicability and effectivity of optimal ILs reported in the literature are evaluated by Aspen Plus® (Fig. 4).
![]() | ||
Fig. 4 Strategy considered to select and evaluate the best candidates of ILs.85 |
Adsorbent discovery and screening for CO2 capture using supervised ML models have been extensively reported in the literature.99 There have been many instances in the literature where the adsorbent properties are also tuned for specific applications. Collins et al.115 showed that a genetic algorithm could efficiently optimise for desired physical or functional property in MOFs by evolving the functional groups within the pores. The authors optimised the CO2 uptake capacity of 141 experimentally characterised MOFs under post-combustion CO2 capture conditions and were able to increase the CO2 adsorption on MOF MIL-47 by 400%. ML models have also been used to identify novel adsorbent properties such as hydrophobic adsorbaphore. This could be a very interesting phenomenon to exploit since the presence of moisture always hindered adsorptive CO2 capture. Boyd et al.116 screened an adsorbent library of ≈300000 structures to identify adsorbents with this adsorbaphore property and demonstrated a synthesis pathway for two such adsorbents. These demonstrations of ML in the discovery, synthesis and exploration of the adsorbent design space show the possible pathways for identifying and implementing an effective adsorbent-based CO2 capture process.116
ML techniques have also been applied to speed up the characterization of the adsorbents. The Grand Canonical Monte Carlo (GCMC) is generally used to predict the adsorption, and Molecular Dynamics simulations (MD) are used to describe diffusion and other transport properties.117,118 These techniques have been used to generate adsorbent property data for large databases of adsorbents at enormous computational costs.105,119 To tackle this problem, researchers have applied supervised ML techniques to build predictive data-driven models. Extensive work has been carried out by computational materials chemists to identify the underlying QSPR using ML.120 There are four general classes of descriptors that are generally used to describe the adsorption equilibria, geometric, topological, chemical and energy-based.121 Dureckova et al.122 developed ML models to predict CO2 working capacity and CO2/H2 selectivity using a diverse set of MOF structures using gradient boosted trees regression method. The authors also showed that both geometric descriptors, such as surface area, and chemical descriptors, constructed using atomic property weighted radial distribution functions, can be used to predict with reasonable accuracy the working capacity and mixture gas selectivity.122 Burner et al.123 presented a similar framework to predict the working capacity and CO2/N2 selectivity using a deep neural network (DNN). The best predictions were obtained with the AP-RDF, chemical motif, and geometric descriptors, all as inputs, with an Radj2 > 0.95. Pardakhti et al.124 reported that a framework for the prediction of methane uptakes using ML algorithms. They evaluated multiple ML algorithms, such as SVR and RF, and reported a high prediction accuracy compared to the GCMC predictions.124 Bucior et al.125 presented a data-driven surrogate trained ML model to predict H2 loading on MOFs using a new type of descriptors as model inputs. The descriptors were derived using the binned histograms of the energies of adsorbent–adsorbate interaction and used as inputs to the predictive model. The sparse regression model trained with this and geometric descriptors to predict gas uptake in multiple MOF databases to a high degree of accuracy.125 These studies show us that both the adsorbent structure and the chemical interactions are needed to be taken into account for accuracy in predictions. ML frameworks have been successfully shown to speed up single adsorbent–adsorbate interactions. Still, their real application is in the prediction of multiple gases and mixture gas adsorption on adsorbents. Techniques such as transfer learning, dimension reduction, feature identification can improve the model predictions for such cases.126 Anderson et al.127 presented a new framework to predict the adsorption of multiple adsorbate gases for a given range of conditions using a MLP. The model was trained using the variables that describe the force-field parameters of “alchemical” species and the MOFs as simple descriptors such as geometric and chemical moieties. The resulting models could then predict the adsorption of six different gases in a diverse set of adsorbents.127
While understanding the separation potential of an adsorbent is critical, quantification of the mechanical stability and synthesizability of the in silico predicted adsorbent structures is an important aspect for the final deployment of the technology. Evans et al.128 showed that ML models predicted bulk and shear moduli of zeolites using only geometric features and that the accuracy of these predictions is better than the traditional force field approaches. Moghadam et al.113 demonstrated that ML techniques and multi-level simulations predict MOF properties. The ML models developed in this work can predict the mechanical properties of MOFs in a matter of seconds. They were also shown to predict the mechanical stability for the in silico predicted structures.113
The recent explosion of ML-related applications means that a large amount of new information, through publicly shared models and data, open up the possibility of transfer learning. Here, models taught to learn patterns for a specific application or purpose can help retrain new models for different applications. This has been demonstrated for applications such as the characterisation of adsorbent isotherms, where ML models used to predict equilibrium measurements of one gas can help the prediction of other gases on the same adsorbent. Thus, saving precious computational time.
To tackle problems mentioned above, ML techniques have been applied to design and optimise cyclic adsorption processes for CO2 capture applications. The studies employing ML to model and optimise cyclic adsorption processes can be classified into three categories. The first category corresponds to studies that used ML for supervised learning (regression) to know the structural mapping between the decision variables and process outputs in the process optimisation in order to avoid the computational burdens of running high-fidelity simulations for functional evaluations. To this end, an initial design of experiments (DOE) is performed on the decision variables that typically cover the entire design space. The high-fidelity models are then used to calculate the desired process outputs (typically key performance indicators used in the optimisation) based on the sample set of decision variables from the DOE. Finally, surrogate models using ML algorithms are constructed based on those samples and subsequently used in the optimisation. Single or multiple surrogate models can be constructed for process outputs. For example, Pai et al.129 tested the ability of a variety of surrogate models constructed based on different supervised ML algorithms to predict the performance indicators of a 4-step VSA process for post-combustion CO2 capture. Algorithms such as decision trees, RFs, SVMs, GPR and ANNs were trained for each performance indicator using a sample set of operating conditions generated via Latin hypercube sampling. Among these, GPR was shown to perform well using an adjusted coefficient of determination (greater than 0.98) as the metric. Upon employing these surrogate models in the process optimisation, they showed that the relative error of the optimal performance indicators from the surrogate and high-fidelity simulations was within 3%. Subraveti et al.130 developed a neural network-based optimisation approach to determine the Pareto solutions of multi-objective maximisation of CO2 purity and CO2 recovery for a complex 8-step PSA process designed for pre-combustion CO2 capture. Herein, the multi-objective NSGA-II (Non-Dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm version II) algorithm's initial generations were carried out using high-fidelity simulations for evaluating objectives. This also served as the training data generation step for the neural network models, which learned the underlying input–output mapping structures between decision variables and objectives, CO2 purity – CO2 recovery. Such training data that was already biased towards the optimal region of the decision variable space helps improve the prediction accuracy of the neural network models in the desired optimal region. A three-layer feed-forward neural network with one input layer, one hidden layer with ten neurons and one output layer were used for each objective to demonstrate this approach, with results indicating that the relative error in both the objectives was found to be around 1%. The PSA optimisation using neural networks was ten times faster as compared to using high-fidelity simulations for functional evaluations. Instead of constructing a surrogate model for each performance indicator, Xiao et al.131 used a multi-output feed-forward neural network architecture to predict purity, recovery and productivity in the PSA optimisations. Vo et al.132 formulated an integrated process model based on the combination of different feed-forward neural networks, which represent the input–output mapping structure of cryogenic, membrane and PSA units for hydrogen recovery and CO2 capture from the tail gas of SMR-based hydrogen plants. The neural network models for each unit were shown to have less than 2% error and were subsequently used to minimise the production cost of the integrated process. The neural network models were also shown to have low computational costs.
Often, uncertainty arises in ML-based optimisations during the ML model selection and/or training the model parameters. Uncertainties in model predictions even lead to potentially different optimal solutions. To address the issue of uncertainties in ML-based optimisations, Hüllen et al.133 proposed three different strategies, i.e., robust optimisation, stochastic programming and discrepancy modelling, integrated with ML models for handling uncertainty. These approaches have been applied to a case of temperature swing adsorption process for DAC where the productivity of the process was maximised subject to purity, recovery and energy constraints. Sparse Grid polynomials and ANNs were used as data-based models to approximate decision variable-processes output mapping. The authors stress the importance of incorporating uncertainty into ML-based optimisations.
The second category of studies involves developing supervised ML models to predict the axial or temporal profiles of the cyclic adsorption process. Pai et al.129 also developed neural network models to predict the bed profiles of the intensive variables of a 4-step VSA process at CSS. Using these neural networks, they demonstrated a rapid convergence to CSS. Further, the neural network predictions were also matched with the experiments. Leperi et al.134 used neural networks to construct basic steps in typical PSA processes for post-combustion CO2 capture. For each step, twelve neural network models were constructed. To elaborate, each neural network model for predicting five state variables (absolute pressure, CO2 gas phase mole fraction, CO2 molar loading, N2 molar loading and column temperature) were measured at ten measured locations along the column. Further, one neural network at each end of the column predicts the total gas flowing in and out of the column. This approach allowed them to synthesise different PSA cycles for post-combustion CO2 capture and calculate their performances based on the neural network models underpinning each step. Oliveira et al.135 proposed a real-time soft sensor for a PSA unit based on deep learning networks. Three different types of ANNs, namely, feed-forward, recurrent and long short-term memory (LSTM) models based on multi-input and a single output, were developed to predict the PSA model dynamics. It was shown that LSTM-based DNNs outperformed feed-forward and recurrent neural networks in terms of predicting the dynamics of PSA. The authors also suggested that the LSTM-based DNNs can be reliable for optimisation, control and on-line measurements of PSA units.
In the third category, supervised ML algorithms such as PLSR were used for reducing the dimensionality of the cyclic adsorption process optimisation. For example, Subraveti et al.130 employed PLSR to identify each decision variable's relative importance in the optimisation, which impacts the process objectives. The most relevant decision variables were identified using the PLS weights, and other variables are discarded. For the case study considered, the original eight decision variables were reduced to three using this approach. This improved the optimisation speeds by almost 50% without compromising the accuracy of the Pareto solutions.
ML-based techniques such as DNNs are well-suited for applications that require large amounts of repetitive computation. ANN-based surrogate models have been applied as cheap computational emulators of complex process models to aid in the fast screening of material. Khurana and Farooq111 developed regression models to directly predict minimum energy and maximum productivity for CO2 capture from a flue gas stream containing 15% CO2 using a VSA process. Khurana and Farooq111 also screened around 80 adsorbents using the ML model and validated the optimised results with a detailed mathematical model. Burns et al.25 and Leperi et al.110 also screened the CoRE MOF database to identify high-performance adsorbents for post-combustion CO2 capture using a detailed model. Burns et al.25 developed a decision tree-based ML model, and Leperi et al.110 developed a generalised separation metric using the data from a detailed model to screen new adsorbents in the same process with a high degree of accuracy. These papers also showed the clear computational advantage of the application of ML-based surrogate models for screening due to their inherent speed and accuracy. Pai et al.26 developed a generalised framework called machine-assisted adsorption process learner and emulator (MAPLE) for modelling and screening any Langmuir (Type I) adsorption isotherm by including the isotherm parameters as model inputs along with the process parameters. The authors demonstrated that the framework accurately modelled process performance and were able to validate the ML-based optimisation framework from the external literature. The study showed the computation required to train the generalised ML model was similar to the computation required to screen ≤ten adsorbents using the traditional modelling and optimisation approach. It should be noted that these ML models are robust only in the training data range. One must be careful not to overtrain and to thoroughly validate the performance with independently generated testing data.
Khurana and Farooq111 developed an inverse design framework to predict the hypothetical best isotherm for post-combustion CO2 capture in a VSA-based process. In this work, the authors considered five input parameters to describe the adsorption equilibria and trained a neural network model. The resulting optimisation of the idealised isotherms provided insight into the effect of the isotherm on the process performance. Pai et al.137 used a ML surrogate, MAPLE, for a wide range of operational conditions and used the inverse adsorbent design approach to study the limits of PVSA-based CO2 capture for a wide range of CO2 feed compositions. Yao et al.138 proposed an automated adsorbent discovery framework using an autoencoder to generate MOF structures with desired functions. The results showed that the model accurately captured structural features and was able to reconstruct MOF structures. The framework showed the automated design of MOFs for CO2 capture from natural gas and flue gas streams.138 These studies highlight the advantage of ML in synergistic processes and adsorbent. Due to their computational speed and accuracy, such ML models allow designers to explore previously computationally restrictive engineering problems.
To reduce the complexity and improve the accuracy of numerical models to predict the coal/char combustion rates, Zhu et al.139 investigated the application of an ANN approach for estimating the coal/char combustion rates with their characteristics as inputs of the neural networks. The results indicated that ANNs can provide a new approach to the development of models for predictions of reactivity/combustion rate of coal combustion with reasonably good accuracy and robustness.139 Later on, several researchers employed ANN to predict the values from thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) of oxy-fuel combustion of different fuels. Chen et al.140 applied ANN models to predict the thermogravimetric curves of co-combustion of sewage sludge and coffee grounds under O2/CO2 atmospheres, with O2/CO2 mixing ratios, heating rates, and temperature as the inputs. After training using the experimental data from the TGA, the optimal ANN model provided a good agreement between the experimental and predicted values. Xie et al.141 compared the performance of RBF and BPNNs on the prediction of TG curves of oxy-co-combustion of textile dyeing sludge and pomelo peel, with the mixing ratio, heating rates, combustion atmosphere and temperature as the inputs and mass loss percent as the output. The results indicated that BPNNs gave a better prediction than that of RBF neural networks.141 Govindan et al.142 used trained ANNs, using TGA to predict the sample mass loss percentage of oxy-fuel combustion of calcined pet coke, with the predictions obtained from the model showing a high degree of accuracy, with a coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.99. Qiao and Zeng143 also applied the ANN framework to predict the gas products of heavy oil gasification under oxy-fuel conditions but the authors have not clarified how they trained and validated their ANN models. Debiagi et al.144 developed a reduced-order model based on ML, which can accurately predict different phases of coal particle combustion at a reduced computation cost. They used a High Dimensional Model Representation (HDMR) method to develop the supervised ML models (see Fig. 5). Unlike the case with the previous work, the training and test datasets were generated from an accurate, detailed solid fuel kinetic model that considered a wide range of operation conditions obtained from a novel gas-assisted coal combustor.144
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Fig. 5 Diagram of a generic multilayer perceptron of the HDMR method.144 |
Krzywanski et al.145 developed a generalised ANN model to predict the SO2 emissions from large- and small-scale circulating fluidised bed (CFB) boilers under air-firing, oxygen-enriched and oxy-fired combustion conditions with the dimension and operating parameters of the CFB boilers as the inputs. The authors145 also conducted a sensitivity analysis to investigate the effects of changing operating parameters on the SO2 emissions using the trained ANN models. The results indicated that the ANN model can serve as a fast tool to provide the accurate prediction of SO2 emissions for coal combustion in the CFB boilers under the different combustion environments with less complexity and costs.145
Besides predicting the useful parameters of oxy-fuel combustion, ML can also be applied to monitor air/oxy-fuel combustion processes for combustion control and optimisation under variable conditions. Bai et al.146 proposed a novel method by combining flame imaging, principal component analysis and random weight network (PCA–RWN) techniques for multi-mode process monitoring for air and oxy-fuel combustion of coal (see Fig. 6). Flame image database collected from a 250 kW air/oxy-fuel combustion Test Facility were used to validate the PCA–RWN models and the performance was evaluated by the Hotelling's T2 and squared prediction error (SPE). Compared to the performance of the proposed PCA–RWN model with other ML classifiers (Kernel Support Vector Machine, Neural Network, and k-Nearest Neighbour classifier) for pattern recognition, the proposed PCA–RWN model gives the best prediction of the average recognition success rate and the least training time.146 The authors147 also followed a similar methodology to apply the PCA with kernel support vector machine (KSVM) model for the multimode monitoring of combustion stability under different oxy-gas fired conditions. Liu et al.148 used a supervised multilayer deep belief network (DBN) to evaluate the nonlinear relationship between the flame images and the outlet oxygen content, and the results indicated that the proposed method was a reliable and efficient way for predicting the real-time oxygen content. Later on, Han et al.149 applied flame imaging and stacked sparse autoencoder based DNN to monitor the combustion stability. The results showed that the proposed model could quantitatively and qualitatively evaluate the combustion stability with good generalisation and robustness.149
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Fig. 6 Diagram of PCA–RWN model for multi-mode combustion process monitoring.149 |
Yan et al.17 used the experimental data of nineteen manganese ores to train the ANN models to predict the reactivity of manganese ores as oxygen carriers in CLC. The results indicated the optimal ANN models can provide very good performance predictions for both training and new dataset and the authors proposed a general workflow in applying ML model to predict the performance and aid the design of the oxygen carriers as shown in Fig. 7.
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Fig. 7 Workflow of developing a machine-learning model for oxygen carriers in chemical-looping processes.17 |
Singstock et al.150 proposed a statistical ML descriptor-based method to predict the reaction free energies and classify the thermodynamically viable active materials for chemical-looping processes, and the authors applied it to evaluate materials for a novel chemical looping process for pure SO2 production. This approach is envisioned to link the process design with high-throughput material discovery to promote the development of a wide range of chemical-looping technologies.150 Wilson and Sahinidis151 proposed a mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MNLP) formulation to estimate and identify kinetic rate parameters from a postulated superset of reactions, and they validated that this approach can automatically generate accurate kinetic models from dynamic CLC process.
The assurance of smooth and long-term operational stability of the CLC system is one of the key requirements for CLC technology to be deployed on a commercial scale. Pan et al. applied the LSTM based recurrent neural network (RNN) for early detecting of fault caused by fines accumulation, which is represented as bubbles in the packed bed standpipe of a chemical looping systems. The results revealed that the model trained by the cold-flow model of sub-pilot scale chemical looping system can provide a recall value of at least 86.7% with the application of ensemble decision strategy, and the authors pointed out the proposed model can easily be extended and generalised with further training using the data obtained from multiple operation conditions.152
Chen et al.153 proposed the use of BPNN to predict the performance of Ca-based sorbents in the calcination/carbonation cycles, based on TGA experimental data. This study observed the factors that affected the sorbent performance, namely sample particle diameter, calcination temperature, calcination duration, calcination atmosphere and carbonation duration. The feed-forward multilayer ANN, which had the architecture of 5-34-1, had the five aforementioned factors as inputs, and the carbonation conversion degree as the output parameter, calculated with the assumption that the decomposition of calcium carbonation was the only reason for sample weight change. Here, 75% of the data was used for training while the remaining 25% was accounted as the test data. The model proposed showed a strong correlation with TGA results and proved the validity for the approximation of Ca-based sorbent in the carbonation process even when conducted at extreme reaction condition.
A recent application of ML to the calcium looping process was developed by Nkulikiyinka et al.154 Here, the authors developed an ANN and random forest (RF) model to act as soft sensor models, for the prediction of gas concentrations for the reaction of steam methane reforming coupled with calcium looping, also known as sorption enhanced steam methane reforming (SE-SMR). In this study, the data was obtained using the Aspen Plus software, where input parameters, regenerator and reformer temperatures, pressure, steam-to-carbon ratio and sorbent-to-carbon ratio, were varied to obtain a wide range of data for the process. The Aspen Plus data was validated against literature data, and was then split into training, validation and test data. Various gas concentrations in the reformer and regenerator, as well as methane conversion were used as the output parameters. The models developed showed high accuracy prediction for the reactor gas concentrations and confirmed that ANN and RF algorithms can successfully model a nonlinear process such as SE-SMR, and therefore act as a suitable data-driven soft sensor for the process.
Krzywanski et al.155 explored a method of predicting the NOx emissions produced from the regenerator of a calcium looping system, coupled with oxyfuel combustion of coal to provide heat of decomposition, using a regression analysis-based modelling technique. The authors conducted the experiment in a dual-fluidised bed (DFB), with the effects of fuel type, oxygen feed, and NO addition to primary or secondary feed gas, being evaluated. The authors provided limited detail on the regression model, however Fig. 8 shows the flowchart of the model application, and the only input necessary are the fixed carbon, the ratio of molar nitrogen to carbon content in fuel N/C, and the O2, concentration in the flue gas from the regenerator, leading to the NOx emission as the output parameter. The results obtained from the model were in good agreement with experimental results, with a correlation coefficient equal to 0.925.
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Fig. 8 Application of the model for the evaluation of NOx concentration if flue gas.155 |
An alternate purpose that ML has been applied to in the calcium looping field, is on the study of the economic feasibility of the post-combustion calcium looping process on a 580 MW coal fired power plant, by Hanak and Manovic.156 In this study, an ANN was developed using data from Aspen Plus simulations, and this model was then combined with results from an economic model developed from a Monte Carlo (MC) simulation. The ANN model was used to connect the process inputs of the process model with the process inputs of the economic model. A two-layer feedforward ANN with ten sigmoid hidden neurons and linear output neurons was developed, with 70% of the data obtained from the Aspen Plus model, used for training, 15% used for validation and 15% used for testing. Fig. 9 shows that the ANN used in this study can depict the thermodynamic performance of the calcium looping retrofit accurately, despite its nonlinear characteristic. The study concluded that the stochastic approach, and incorporation of the ANN model, in the economic feasibility assessment enables a more accurate and reliable comparison of different calcium looping retrofit configurations.
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Fig. 9 Structure of the artificial neural network used to map the thermodynamic performance of the calcium looping process retrofit.156 |
For calcium and chemical looping technologies, it is expected that ML will play an important role in materials development, process control, and techno-economical assessment. However, only a few researchers have attempted to utilise ML for these goals. We encourage researchers working in this area to consider applying ML in their research to maximise their research outputs. For instance, CLC is a novel carbon capture technology, and the selection of suitable oxygen carriers is a key barrier to chemical looping technologies development. Over the last 20 years, over 1000 materials have been investigated experimentally. This could serve as an ideal database for utilising ML to screen and identify useful information to guide the oxygen-carrier materials development. Also, ML can be combined with density functional theory (DFT) to screen the thermodynamic feasible metal oxides as the oxygen carriers.157 It is also foreseen that ML will accelerate the discovery, design, and synthesis of sorbents for calcium looping process by using the historical research data on sorbents development.
In the Section 3, we have reviewed and discussed the research of applying ML in CO2 capture, which includes CO2 absorption, CO2 adsorption, oxyfuel combustion, calcium looping and chemical looping combustion. There is also work on ML in membrane for CO2 separation which is detailed elsewhere.158–160
However, it is difficult for traditional flowmeters to meet the accuracy requirements due to the complex properties of CO2 fluid. Unlike water, oil and natural gas, CO2 is expected to be transported near the critical point, which is very close to the expected operational condition of transportation pipelines. A small change in line temperature and pressure may lead to a significant change in the phase of CO2, resulting in gas–liquid two-phase CO2 flow. Impurities produced using different capture methods may also affect the phase behaviours of CO2 flow. In addition, some impurities, such as water, H2S, NO and SO2, produce corrosive products which may influence the choice of flowmeter material.163,164 For some volumetric flowmeters, the density data calculated from the equation of state (EoS) is required to obtain the mass flowrate. However, the accuracy of EoS of CO2 flow with impurities is insufficient.165 Moreover, flexible operations of CCUS systems on smart fossil fuel fired power plants, such as frequent load changes and rapid start-ups and shutdowns, may lead to rapid changes in the properties of CO2 flow. Transient behaviours that occur in pipelines may result in the phase transition of CO2 and flow instability, making the accurate measurement of CO2 flowrate more challenging.
Over the past few decades, some techniques have been developed to achieve the accurate measurement of multiphase flow, especially gas–liquid two-phase flow. Some of these techniques, such as radiation attenuation and nuclear magnetic resonance, exhibit satisfactory performance in terms of measurement range and accuracy, and can directly provide mass flowrate, density and composition of multiphase flow.166,167 Nevertheless, the high cost and system complexity restrict their applicability in the CCUS sector. Other economical techniques such as differential pressure-based flowmeters are not able to achieve satisfactory accuracy in the mass flow measurement. In order to improve the accuracy of flowmeters, low-cost sensing techniques incorporating ML algorithms have been proposed in recent years.168,169 ML algorithms are capable of handing the hidden relationships in large, complex and multivariate datasets and have been used in the measurement of gas–liquid two-phase CO2 flow.
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Fig. 10 A typical CO2 flow measurement system based on low-cost sensors and ML algorithms.170 |
Henry et al.171 reported a case study which achieved the errors of mass flowrate within 1–5% in the measurement of gas–oil two-phase flow based on a Coriolis mass flowmeter and an ANN under the condition of 1 kg s−1 to 10 kg s−1 in flowrate and less than 60% in GVF. The same measurement system was also employed to measure slugging two-phase CO2 flow at the pressure of 5.52–7.03 MPa and the temperature of 4–32 °C.172 Results show that the reading difference between the Coriolis flowmeter and other sales meters over several weeks is usually within ±5%. Comparative investigations into the performance of ML algorithms for gas–water two-phase flow metering were conducted by Wang et al.173 Several algorithms, such as ANNs, SVM and GP, were developed to estimate the liquid mass flowrate and GVF. The inputs of the ML algorithms were obtained from a Coriolis flowmeter and a differential pressure (DP) transducer. For the mass flowrate measurement, the input variables are apparent mass flowrate, apparent density, damping and DP, while for the GVF measurement, the apparent mass flowrate, density and DP are taken as inputs. Results show that the relative errors are within ±1% in mass flowrate measurement over the range of 250 to 3200 kg h−1 and within ±10% in GVF prediction. Wang et al.170 also applied a Coriolis mass flowmeter incorporating LS-SVM models to measure the mass flowrate of gas–liquid two-phase CO2 flow in both horizontal and vertical pipelines. Fig. 11 illustrates the principle of the flow measurement of gas–liquid two-phase CO2 flow. A classification model is developed and incorporated in the system to recognise the flow pattern and independent LS-SVM models for the mass flowrate metering of gas–liquid two-phase CO2 flow. Results suggest that most of the relative errors under steady-state flow conditions are within ±2% in horizontal test pipeline and ±1.5% in vertical test pipeline. However, the performance of the models is affected by the lack of verification under dynamic flow conditions. It should be noted that the aforementioned models can also be trained to measure the GVF of two-phase CO2 flow (Section 4.1.3).
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Fig. 11 Principle of the mass flowrate and GVF measurements of two-phase CO2 flow.170 |
As shown in Fig. 12, a flow-pattern-based LS-SVM model developed by Wang et al.173 was utilised to measure the GVF of gas–liquid two-phase CO2 flow. Experimental results suggest that errors of the measured GVF are mostly within ±10%. Shao et al.27 achieved the GVF measurement in a horizontal CO2 pipeline based on a 12-electrode capacitive sensor and data-driven models, as shown in Fig. 12. Three data-driven models, BPNN, RBFNN and LS-SVM, were established. Unlike the flow pattern recognition approach, reconstructed images are usually not required for GVF measurement. The GVF measurement of two-phase CO2 flow is achieved without the time-consuming image reconstruction of the flow pattern. Experiments were conducted under both steady-state and dynamic flow conditions. For steady-state flow conditions, the mass flowrate was set from 200 to 3100 kg h−1 while the GVF was from 0–84%. Under dynamic flow conditions the gas phase CO2 was rapidly increased from 120 kg h−1 to 400 kg h−1 and then decreased while the liquid CO2 was fixed at 1500 kg h−1. Measurement results show that the RBFNN outperforms the other two models. Errors are mostly within ±7% and ±16% under steady-state and dynamic flow conditions, respectively.
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Fig. 12 Principle of CO2 GVF measurement using capacitive sensors.27 |
It must be pointed out that dimension reduction algorithms such as Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Independent Component Analysis (ICA) are easily confused with input variable selection. Dimension reduction aims to transform data from a high-dimensional space into a low-dimensional space, resulting in a reduced number of variables.
For air–water two-phase flow measurement, Wang et al.173 applied PMI, GA-ANN and tree-based iterative input selection (IIS) methods to investigate the parametric dependence, significance and sensitivity of the input variables to the desired outputs, i.e., mass flowrate and GVF. Results suggested that the selected variables using the PMI algorithm, observed density, apparent mass flowrate, DP and damping provide more effective information for the models to measure liquid mass flowrate. The variables selected using the tree-based IIS algorithm, included observed density, apparent mass flowrate and DP, which were more significant to predict GVF. Subsequently, Wang et al.170 investigated the measurement of gas–liquid two-phase CO2 flow and developed LS-SVM models for flow pattern recognition, mass flow measurement and GVF prediction (Section 4.1.3), with the selected input variables including apparent mass flowrate, observed density, damping and DP.
Although variable selection approaches can provide some valuable information to determine the input variables of an ML model, the accuracy of the methods also depend on the observational dataset, such as data size and their distributions. A dataset with less data or low-quality may result in underestimation or overestimation of the candidate variables for an ML model. Consequently, in order to ensure the selection accuracy with a limited size of a dataset, it is necessary to determine the input subset by combining variable selection methods with engineering judgement based on the relevant knowledge of the target application. The results of input variable selection will help enhance engineering judgement whilst the latter will interpret the variable selection results.
Deep learning algorithms of Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and Gate Recurrent Unit (GRU) may also offer possible solutions. Meanwhile, a data driven model is usually a black-box which is highly dependent on the available dataset and it may result in poor generalization capability when used on practical CCUS facilities. ML by combining a physical based model and a data driven model may improve the model interpretability, measurement accuracy and generalization capability, but further research is required in this direction. In addition, the data driven models that have been proposed and developed to date have some drawbacks, such as heavy computational workload caused by the feature engineering or inefficiency when dealing with a high volume of data. Therefore, the necessity and significance of developing new deep learning models, which can deal with the above problems, should be investigated.
A reliable CO2 test rig is essential for R&D in CO2 mass flow metering of single-phase and two-phase CO2 with impurities under both static and dynamic CCUS conditions. A dedicated CO2 two-phase flow rig with an inner pipe diameter of 25 mm is available at the North China Electric Power University. The liquid flowrate of CO2 ranges from 200 to 3600 kg h−1 with uncertainty of 0.16%, while the gas flowrate range is from 15 to 400 kg h−1 with uncertainty of 0.3%. The line pressure of the rig can be varied from 57 to 72 bar with a temperature between 20 and 30 °C. However, new features, including a wider range of flow conditions, injection of impurities, different pipe orientations for meters under test, and variations in the pipe diameter of the test sections should be developed in future.
Four types of trappings could occur when CO2 is injected into depleted oil reservoirs: structural-stratigraphic trapping, solubility trapping, residual trapping, and mineral trappings.188–190 Structural-stratigraphic trapping is the process that CO2 is stored in the underground structure as a supercritical state.191 CO2 can often be trapped under low permeable formations such as shale or mudstone, which can prevent CO2 from migrating upward due to the buoyancy force. Besides, impermeable zones such as cap rocks and sealed faults can also provide a good condition for the entrapment of CO2.192,193 Thus, the investigation of the caprock integrity for a long-term sealing capability is important before a CO2 sequestration project is carried on.194 Solubility trapping refers to the dissolution of CO2 in the formation of aqueous and oleic phases.195 The solubility of CO2 in formation water depends on underground conditions including pressure, temperature and water salinity. Numerous studies have been performed to construct the relations between the CO2 solubility with those parameters that would impact solubility trapping (i.e. diffusivity,196 oil/gas–brine interfacial tension (IFT),197etc.). The solubility of CO2 in the oil phase is generally higher than that of brine in mature oil reservoirs.191 Residual trapping involves the process that trapping CO2 as an immobile phase within the porous media due to capillary forces. It is an important phenomenon in the CO2 sequestration process especially when there are no reliable sealing formations or caprock. The gas hysteresis effect plays a vital role in the residual trapping.198 The bypass of a wetting phase fluid will render the non-wetting phase immobile, thus leading to the entrapment of the non-wetting phase. The effect of residual trapping can be enhanced when the hysteresis effect is considered. Ampomah et al.191 in a detailed numerical simulation study, pointed out that there would be an apparent increase in the predicted amount of CO2 trapped as a residual phase after the gas hysteresis effect was implemented. The predicted residual trapped CO2 surged from 1% to 14% after the hysteresis effect was considered. In the mineral trapping, CO2 will react with formation mineralogy and be trapped in the precipitation or dissolution of extant or new carbonate minerals. Compared with other mechanisms, CO2 reactions often take years to occur thus its impact on the transportation of the CO2 plume would be observed on a longer time scale. When CO2 is in contact with formation brine, aqueous species such as soluble CO2, HCO3−, CO3− are generated, and then reacted with formation minerals. Some common reactions between CO2 and formation mineralogy are summarised in Table 4.
Reactions | |
---|---|
1 | CO2(aq) + H2O = H+ + HCO3− |
2 | CO32− + H+ = HCO3− |
3 | OH− + H+ = H2O |
4 | Quartz = SiO2(aq) |
5 | Albite + 4H+ = 2H2O + Na+ + Al3+ + 3SiO2(aq) |
6 | Calcite + H+ = Ca2+ + HCO3− |
7 | Dolomite + 2H+ = Ca2+ + Mg2+ + 2HCO3− |
8 | Siderite + H+ = HCO3− + Fe2+ |
9 | Illite + 8H+ = 5H2O + 0.6K+ + 0.25Mg2+ + 2.3Al3+ + 3.5SiO2(aq) |
10 | Kaolinite + 6H+ = 5H2O + 2Al3+ + 2SiO2(aq) |
11 | Smectite-low-Fe–Mg + 7H+ = 0.29Fe2+ + 3.75SiO2(aq) + 0.16Fe3+ + 4.5H2O + 1.25Al3+ + 0.15Na+ + 0.02Ca2+ + 0.2K+ + 0.9Mg2+ |
12 | Chamosite-7A + 10H+ = 2Fe2+ + SiO2(aq) + 2Al3+ + 7H2O |
Several studies using ML-based methodologies have been performed regarding how those trapping mechanisms influence the dispersal and migration of the CO2 plume. Sun et al.188 studied the CO2 trapping mechanisms in the Morrow B Sandstone in the Farnsworth Units. A neural network-based approach was used to match the reservoir model with historical data. The history matched model was then employed to evaluate the impacts of residual, structural-stratigraphic, solubility, and mineral trapping mechanisms on CO2 sequestration and hydrocarbon production. The ML-based history match process was able to provide reliable pressure, fluid saturation and composition distributions that help the numerical model effectively investigate trapping mechanisms with a reduced computational overhead. The conclusion was that more CO2 is dissolved in the oleic phase than the aqueous phase, which is due to the high salinity of the formation water. Moreover, mineral trapping plays a less significant role in the CO2 sequestration process compared with other trapping mechanisms.
Ni and Benson199 studied the effect of mesoscale heterogeneity on larger-scale multiphase fluid flow properties and trapping behaviours using a ML clustering method. The CO2 saturation maps, the voxel-level porosity and the permeability maps were used as the inputs for the model. Each voxel was treated as one data point, and the time series properties at each voxel were treated as individual attributes (i.e., CO2 saturation time series). The CO2 saturation and the porosity maps were obtained through CT image manipulation, and the voxel-level permeability map was obtained using the extended Krause's method.199 This study tested two clustering methods and found that K-means clustering was more suitable for characterizing flow behaviours and hierarchical clustering was more desirable for identifying the capillary heterogeneity trapping behaviours. Five different sets of coreflooding data were used to examine the feasibility of the proposed approach. They concluded this method was able to assess how the mesoscale petrophysical properties influence capillary-dominated flow and residual trapping behaviours. Moreover, the differences in time series behaviours among the different clusters would be diminished in viscous-dominated flow regimes.
CO2 storage of solubility trapping involves the process where the injected CO2 contacts in situ brines and dissolves into the water through molecular diffusion. Research was carried out to study the CO2/oil/brine interactions under subsurface conditions. Amar and Ghahfarokhi196 established the correlation between diffusivity coefficients of the CO2 in brine water with pressure, temperature and the viscosity of the solvent using the group method of data handling (GMDH) and gene expression programming (GEP). GMDH is one type of ANN that can generate an explicit expression for the correlation between inputs and output. The correlation generated using GMDH takes the advantage of polynomial models. GEP is one evolutionary technique to mimic systems with accurate explicit expressions, which is an improved version of genetic programming. Besides the common genetic operators, including selection, crossover, elitism and mutation, GEP also introduces new actions such as insertion and transposition to find a reliable correlation. The conclusion was that both GEP and GMDH correlations were able to make predictions that were very close to experimental values, and the GEP correlation yielded higher accuracy than the GMDH correlation. The GEP model was also compared with decision trees (DTs), RF, mixed Kernel-based SVM coupled with GA and other pre-existing models, the GEP model was superior to all these models.
Menad et al.200 proposed to use MLP and RBFNN to predict the CO2 solubility in brine at different temperatures, pressures and molalities of NaCl. Additionally, several evolutionary algorithms were employed to optimise the control parameters of the neural networks, namely the Levenberg–Marquardt (LM) algorithm, GA, particle swarm optimization (PSO) and artificial bee colony (ABC). Combinations of those methods were compared to determine the best one. They found that RBFNN-ABC would yield to the most accurate prediction in the tests among all combinations.
Zhang et al.201 proposed a work to model the CO2–brine IFT using extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) trees. The generated model was then employed to determine the optimal CO2 sequestration depth in saline aquifers. The brines used to synthesise the database consider one or more of the following salts: NaCl, KCl, Na2SO4, MgCl2, and CaCl2. Thus, the total molalities of the monovalent cations (Na+ and K+) and bivalent cations (Ca2+ and Mg2+) were considered as two independent input variables. CH4 or N2 were two impurities accounted for in the CO2 stream, so the mole fractions of these two impure components were categorised into other two individual input variables. Pressure and temperature were also utilised as the other two variables due to their important impacts on the CO2–brine IFT. After inconsistent data points were removed, a total of 2346 data points were used to train the IFT prediction model. The XGBoost trees model combined a cluster of classification and regression trees (CARTs) to fit the training data samples. The basic components contained in CART are a root node, a set of internal nodes, and a set of leaf nodes, which is depicted in Fig. 13.
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Fig. 13 Illustration of a CART. L denotes the leaf node (modified from Zhang et al.201). |
The hyperparameters of the XGBoost trees were optimised using the K-fold cross-validation integrated with the exhaustive grid search approach. In the grid search approach, the search range of each parameter is divided into different grids and this approach will test the values of all grids to determine the best result. Based on the model, the permutation importance (PI) was employed to ascertain the importance of each input variable to the IFT. Results showed that pressure had the highest impact on IFT, followed by temperature, bivalent cation molality and monovalent cation molality, while the mole fractions of CH4 or N2 were the least important factors. The capacity of structural trapping CO2 in aquifers varies with the CO2–brine IFT that would be affected with different temperatures and pressures. It was claimed that with the help of the generated model, reservoirs with different pressure and geothermal gradients can be used to study the capacity of structural trapping CO2. An increase in the maximal structural trapping capacities for shallower formations was observed when the pressure was higher and/or the geothermal gradient was lower.
Wang et al.205 studied how to interpret the CO2 saturation using seismic and downhole monitoring data. This study used ML approaches to infer the CO2 saturation at different depths from the combination of synthetic seismic data and monitored downhole pressure and total dissolved solids (TDS) information. The framework was built upon a candidate geologic carbon storage site near Kimberlina, CA, USA. A hypothetical well leakage was included in the numerical model, which was focused on simulating the three geological layers overlying the CO2 storage reservoir. All three layers were aquifer layers with a sand fraction of approximately 0.8. There were 6000 numerical simulations implemented by varying the distributions for the permeability of the three geologic layers. Each simulation had a 20 years’ prediction with a timestep of one year. At each time step, rock physics modelling was performed to estimate changes in seismic velocity due to the simulated CO2 and brine leakage from the flow simulation outputs. Therefore, a total of 120000 forward seismic velocity models were obtained from those 6000 simulations. Each velocity model was further used to generate synthetic shot gathers using 2D finite-difference acoustic wave modelling, along a sparse 2D seismic line with only five shots and 40 receivers. For each velocity model, five seismic features were calculated thus 1200 (= 6 × 40 × 5) seismic features could be used to train the prediction model. Besides the seismic features, measured downhole pressure and TDS at three depths were also included in the training inputs, leading to a total of 1206 involved in each input-output pair. The output was the category of CO2 saturation at three depths that have been labelled as five different integers to discretize the range of CO2 saturation from zero to very high level. The SVM with a linear kernel (linear SVM), support vector machine with a radial basis kernel (SVMr), DNN with two hidden layers and recurrent neural network (RNN) with a LSTM layer were used to train the CO2 saturation prediction model respectively. The performance of the models was estimated using the Kappa statistic, meaning the prediction accuracy was calculated and ranked between 0 to 1, with 0 representing a random prediction and 1 standing for perfect prediction. It was concluded that compared with using seismic monitoring alone, adding downhole pressure and TDS measurements as input features could improve the accuracy of the CO2 saturation inversion.
Sinha et al.28,183 demonstrated how to detect the CO2 leakage using pressure data. The injection of CO2 would cause pressure perturbation across the reservoir field. Harmonic pulse testing (HPT) is one approach to cause this kind of perturbation hence it can be used to differentiate CO2 leakage. In a typical HPT job, the perturbation was induced by the harmonic injection of a fluid into the reservoir at the injection well, and the responses were recorded at the observation well. The pressure HPT can be used to differentiate the pressure response of a leak versus the non-leak in a field test. In a CCUS project across multiple depleted oil fields, many injection wells and abandoned wells could act as the path for CO2 leakage, making the interpretation of the voluminous HPT data a challenging task for human brains. However, the ML techniques can be a good alternative. In this work, the author used different neural networks to build the anomaly detectors to interpret CO2 leakage, including multi-layer neural network (MFNN), LSTM, convolutional, neural networks (CNN), and a combination of CNN and LSTM (CONV-LSTM). The actual measured pressure signal was compared with the predicted response for the non-leak situation, and then the error was calculated as an indicator of the CO2 leakage (anomaly). The conclusion was that LSTM outperformed the others in the pressure anomaly detection tests and the proposed approach could provide early warnings to the CO2 leakage in a CCUS project.
Lima and Lin206 integrated geological data and ML techniques to predict the CO2 and brine leakage in a 200 years’ duration in geological carbon sequestration (GCS) project. The database used for the employed machine-learning approaches was acquired from 500 simulations that were generated to model underground water flow and understanding effects at GCS sites attributed to CO2 injection. Those models contain an injection well, a legacy well and three geological layers. The seismic data and legacy well pressure was used as inputs for function predicting CO2 and brine leakage amount. The Inception model was used to train the seismic data and CNN model was used to handle pressure data. Here, 50 out of 500 simulations were utilised as test sets, and models’ performance was compared between the model only using seismic data and other using both seismic data and well pressure. It was found that including pressure data would provide small improvements in the prediction of CO2 and brine leakage. Moreover, employing this developed approach was able to provide an accurate prediction of the CO2 and brine leakage on GCS sites.
Zhong et al.207 used a combined CNN and LSTM model, designated as ConvLSTM, to detect the CO2 leakage in a CCUS project. The CNN model was used to handle the spatial features and the LSTM was used for temporal features. The spatial features considered porosity and permeability and the temporal features included the CO2 injection rate and the bottomhole pressures of a production well and a leak well. The temporal features were transferred into 2D images and the pixel value at the injection well location was the injection rate and the pixel values at the production and monitor wells were corresponding bottomhole pressures. Thus, the total inputs for the ConvLSTM model were three 2D images including one image containing the injection rate and bottomhole pressure at the production well, and the other two are areal distributions of the porosity and permeability. The output from the model was the predicted bottomhole pressure at the monitoring well, which was compared with a real monitored pressure to determine whether there is an anomaly in the CO2 injection. The database used to train the ConvLSTM model was from a pulse testing experiment where the CO2 is injected cyclically with an injection duration of 90 minutes. The injected CO2 was artificially produced at a constant production rate of 60 kg min−1 to mimic a CO2 leakage at the production well. A detection function was defined to calculate the probability of the test data point being in a user-defined normal data range given a user-defined threshold. They also pointed out that insufficient datasets or existing noises in the raw data may lead to inaccurate prediction.
Singh208 introduced a workflow to monitor and detect CO2 leakage from a reservoir using injection rates and bottomhole pressures. A deconvolution response was defined as the function of time-dependent well bottomhole pressure and injection rates to measure the fluid leakage, which could be simulated using MLR of all the wells present in the reservoir. The model training process followed a strategy that field history without any leakage was used to train and validate the model. Then the model prediction was the simulated scenarios where no leakage took place. The deviation between the predictions and real monitoring deconvolution responses was employed to determine the leakage. The capability of the proposed workflow was demonstrated by applying it to three case studies: (1) a naturally fractured tight reservoir with five injectors and four monitoring wells; (2) a reservoir with a barrier and the same well pattern as case 1; (3) a real deep offshore saline aquifer with thick shale layer above and below the reservoir. It was concluded that the proposed method was able to detect leakage of both incompressible and compressible fluids from a simple reservoir to a fully heterogeneous and structurally complex field. The author also pointed that this method could provide preliminary insights into the location of the leakage, but still required the help of expensive surveys (such as seismic, etc.) to identify the actual location of a leak and the severity of the leak.
The applications of ML-based approaches mostly seek to reduce the computational overhead required by calling for the original high-fidelity numerical model,219,220 hence shortening the time needed by running the numerical model and further enabling some complicated jobs such as optimisation,221,222 and uncertainty assessment.214 This type of application is often considered as generating a proxy model or surrogate model using various ML-based approaches.
Vida et al.223 introduced a work that couples grid-based surrogate reservoir model (SRM_G) and well-based surrogate reservoir model (SRM_W) to simulate a CO2-EOR project at the Scurry Area Canyon Reef Operators Committee (SACROC) oilfield. The SRM_W models were used to investigate the flooding front and simulate the changes in properties along with time in each grid block in the reservoir. The properties that were handled by SRM_G included pressure, phase saturation, or composition of reservoir fluid components at any desired time step. The SRM_Ws were used to deal with simulation related to well production data, such as oil rate, water rate and water oil ratio, etc. SRM_Ws could be used to estimate response of the reservoir at the well level (rate) to various reservoir parameters or operational constraints. An ANN model with one hidden layer was used to train the SRMs. The values of each property at each timestep were predicted using one trained SRM. For the SRM_G, a total of 60 neural networks were generated to predict the interested properties at each timestep (15 models per property). The integration of the SRM_Gs and SRM_Ws contained the following steps: at the initial timestep, SRM_Gs ran first and the calculated pressure, phase saturation, and CO2 mole fraction for all grids were processed to obtain the well productivity index and tiering computations pertaining to grid-based and well-based systems. The information along with well-based initial information was then fed to SRM_Ws to calculate water, oil and CO2 production at each well and entire field at first timestep. This process then proceeded to next timestep and information of each grid was updated until final timestep was reached. It was reported that total time for running 60 neural network models to deploy the SRMs’ calculation was around 800 seconds. The original numerical model took more than 48 hours to run one realization that was used for optimization design on a machine with 24 GB RAM and a 3.47 GHz processor. By using coupled SRM models, one simulation job was finished in 15 seconds on the same computer.
Artun224 studied single-well cyclic gas (N2, CO2 and CH4) injection in fractured and depleted reservoirs. Various simulation scenarios were conducted based upon compositional reservoir model with hydraulically fractured well and low-permeable formations. This study focused on assessing impacts of design parameters on both volumetric and economic utilisation efficiency factors. Factors considered included the injection rate, duration (and volume), soaking duration, economic rate limit, and injected gas composition. A fast economic efficiency indicator was also constructed using neural networks based on the prepared simulating data. It was concluded that N2 was better than other gases for short-term (5 or 10 years) benefits. Amini et al.225,226 used SRM_G to replace the numerical reservoir model of a field located in Otway Basin in Australia with a CO2 sequestration pilot project. The SRM model was trained through neural networks that used well data, static data and dynamic data as training inputs. It was concluded that the developed SRM model could generate outputs of complex reservoir models with high accuracy in a short time.
Amini and Mohaghegh227 proposed work to develop proxy fluid flow model for the reservoir responses (pressure, saturation, and CO2 mole fraction) undergoing a CO2 sequestration process. The proposed approach was applied to a heterogeneous reservoir with 100000 active grid blocks to verify its capability. During the reservoir simulation, properties at a certain grid block would depend on its interactions with the surrounding grids. For instance, the CO2 movement and gas saturation at one grid would be affected by the pore volumes and degree of tightness of the grids in the vicinity of this grid. To account for this kind of dependence, tier systems were introduced to express the relationship between one specific grid to its surrounding grids. An ANN-based SRM model was generated using the data gathered from a CO2 injection reservoir with one injector and one producer. Five different simulating scenarios were prepared by varying the CO2 injection rates and cumulative injection volume. The training inputs included static data (grid location, grid top, porosity, permeability), calculated static data (distance to the injection well, distance to the sealing and non-sealing boundaries, user-defined parameters), well data (injection rate, cumulative injection) and the average porosities and permeabilities of the tier system; the training outputs were the dynamic data (pressure, gas saturation and CO2 mole fraction at any timestep). An ANN model with one hidden layer was used to train the proxy. It was concluded that the computational speed was increased by about 20 times for this specific simulation case with an acceptable error margin.
Besides boosting computational speed, another reason for the employment of ML techniques is to ease the complexity of solving a problem, figuring out the unclear input–output patterns and structures that exist in the obtained experimental/simulated database. This mostly occurs when traditional methods fail to work properly due to missing information. As one of the critical parameters considered in the CO2 flooding process, the precise prediction of minimum miscibility pressure (MMP) of oil in the CO2-EOR process are widely studied. Sinha et al.28 used ML techniques to predict MMP. The proposed method included using an analytical correlation that employed the SVM to tune the coefficients and a hybrid method that combined RF regression and generated correlation. A correlation was used to predict the MMP and linear SVM was used to tune the coefficients included in this correlation. It was reported the proposed correlation would work for spectrum of MMP from 6 to 34 MPa.
Xiong et al.228 used two different methods to forecast unconventional reservoir well production, namely ANN and Time Series Analysis. Traditional methods such as decline curve analysis may not be as powerful as they normally would be when dealing with conventional reservoir well production due to limitations with shale oil production such as boundary dominated flow and constant operation condition. Peak production rate and hydraulic fracture parameters were considered as factors influencing oil production. DNN and autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models were employed for the study. The ARIMA models updated their training data as function of time, thus a smaller time step will lead to more accurate predictions compared with real data. Moosavi et al.229 tested the capability of four different hybrid-RBF networks in predicting oil recovery factor and oil rate in a foam-CO2 flooding reservoir. The RBF network was combined with various evolutionary algorithms, namely particle swarm, imperialist competitive, genetic and teaching–learning based algorithm, to build the prediction model. These algorithms were employed to optimise the values for the weights and biases applied to the network nodes. It was claimed that teaching–learning-based optimization hybrid model (TLBO-RBF) achieved the greatest accuracy in predicting based on the datasets used in this study.
Chen et al.230 developed a work to characterise the CO2-EOR in residual oil zones (ROZ). ROZs are aquifers (or parts of aquifers) in which oil has migrated from source rock but is subsequently swept by the natural movement of aquifer waters over geologic time and remains at residual saturation. The main distinction between CO2 storage in ROZs and conventional oil reservoir and brine was also assessed. Here, a ML models to predict potential of hydrocarbon production and CO2 sequestration amount in ROZs were developed. Three ML models, namely Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS), SVR and RF, were used and compared in terms of predictive capability in this work. It was concluded that when crude oil was present, more CO2 would be dissolved in oil than brine water; while when there was no oil within the system, more gas would be trapped in the pore structure than be dissolved in the aquifer.
Menad and Noureddine232 introduced a methodology to optimise CO2 water-alternating-gas (CO2-WAG) processes using NSGA-II (Non-Dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm version II) coupled with a hybrid model based on MLP. LM, Bayesian Regularization (BR) and scaled conjugate gradient (SCG) algorithms were utilised in training proxy model. The objectives of this work were to optimise total oil recovery and total field water production. A total of 75 simulation realizations were generated using Latin Hyper Cube method and then fed to train a proxy model. The author concluded that the MLP-LMA model was the most accurate proxy. Zhang and Sahinidis233 employed polynomial chaos expansion (PCE) to generate a proxy model used in uncertainty quantification in CO2 sequestration. A mixed-integer programming (MIP) formulation was introduced to identify the best subset of basic terms to lower the degree of expansion and to assist in deriving PCE models. Then, Monte Carlo (MC) simulation was subsequently performed by substituting values of uncertain parameters into closed-form polynomial functions to determine uncertainties of injecting CO2 underground into a saline aquifer. For each grid at a specific timestep, a PCE model was built to estimate two outcomes: pressure and gas saturation. Uncertain parameters considered included permeability and porosity. Here, 100 numerical simulations were prepared using LHS method to construct many PCEs. This approach was also used to find optimal injection rates with uncertain porosity and permeability.
You et al.234 studied the multi-objective optimisation of a CCUS project located at Andarko Basin, USA. Their work used both weighted sum method222,234 and Pareto-theory-based optimisation algorithm235,236 to optimise hydrocarbon production, CO2 sequestration volume and project economic outcomes simultaneously. The constructed workflow employed ANNs to build robust proxy models and then coupling the proxies with the particle swarm algorithm to carry out the optimisation process. The work emphasised the importance of computationally effective training of ANN proxies and how hyperparameters of trained proxies impact prediction performance. Almasov et al.237 proposed to optimise the design parameters of a single-well CO2 huff-n-puff process in unconventional oil reservoirs. The optimised objective was to obtain the net present value (NPV) of the process that is estimated using either LS-SVR or GPR. The parameters were optimised using the SQP method. Amar et al.238 introduced a method to optimise the parameters of the CO2-WAG process to maximise oil production. SVR was used to build the proxy model and then the proxy was used with the GA to find the combinations of parameters that led to the optimal oil production. GA was also utilised as the approach to optimise the hyperparameters of SVR for better proxy performance.
Nwachukwu et al.239 coupled the XGBoost model with a modified version of Mesh Adaptive Direct Search (MADS) to deal with well placement and control optimization in a CO2-WAG project to obtain maximal NPV. MADS is a pattern search-based method. In the modified MADS, a multidirectional pooling scheme was employed within every iteration to increase the search efficiency. More importantly, the author introduced a method to reduce the uncertainty existing in the optimised solutions. Since the proxy model will have prediction errors compared with the numerical model, an error model was constructed as a function of control parameters and objective functions (i.e., well placement, water/gas injection rates and NPV) based on the training information. In the optimisation process, if the difference between two candidate optimal solutions was smaller than the estimated proxy errors using the error model, then the original numerical model would be invoked to determine the “true value” of the candidate optimal solutions. This method increased the accuracy of the optimisation and lowered the simulator calls. The optimisation results were compared with the results of joint and sequential schemes using MADS with a full reservoir simulator, it showed that the proposed approach could yield a median error of 0.6% and an R2 of 0.99.
Ampomah et al.186 introduced a method to handle the co-optimization of the cumulative oil production and CO2 storage within the Farnsworth Unit (FWU). This work combined these two objectives into a single objective function and assigned a unit weight to each one to reduce computational overhead and accelerating optimisation convergence. The combined objective function was used to find the optimal solution incorporating a quadratic response surface that was generated as the proxy model. The proposed method proves computationally efficient in dealing with the co-optimisation problem. Ampomah et al.240 presented an optimisation under uncertainty workflow to ascertain optimum solution in the presence of geological heterogeneity. A neural network optimisation algorithm was utilised to optimise the multi-objective function both with and without geological uncertainty. This work selected vertical permeability anisotropy (Kv/Kh) as the geological uncertain parameter. A developed risk aversion factor was used to quantify and/or represent the confidence levels to assist in decision making. Ampomah et al.241 presented a performance assessment of storage and corresponding oil recovery utilising a Latin hypercube sampling technique to access sensitivity of uncertain parameters towards the pre-defined objective function. A response surface model was constructed using Box–Behnken (BB) deterministic sampling algorithm. A total of 49 simulations were required for training data using this BB design. Forty-nine additional simulations were required to validate the constructed polynomial response surface method (PRSM) model using the BB sampling algorithm. This work elaborated a comprehensive reservoir characterisation framework to quantify heterogeneity uncertainty that led to robust prediction of long-term fate of CO2 stored within a subject reservoir. Bromhal et al.242 introduced a work to summarise how the National Risk Assessment Partnership (NRAP) handles the long-term quantitative risk assessment for carbon storage. NRAP's method was to divide the carbon storage system into components—reservoir, wells, seals, groundwater, atmosphere. And reduced-order models (ROM) were developed for each component using different approaches, such as look up table (LUT), ANNs and PCEs, Polynomial Regression, RBFs,188 or Response Surface techniques. The ROMs were mostly used to study concentration and pressure information within the reservoir, especially at the reservoir-seal interface during CO2 injection and for up to 1000 years post-injection period. These pressures and saturations could then be used as input parameters of wellbore or seal leakage models to predict rates and volumes of leakage of CO2. Different components could be assembled to simulate the entire system within fractions of seconds. The integrated model could also be used to estimate the probability of failure of a carbon storage system with the help of the MC method.
Nwachukwu et al.243 used XGBoost to teach a proxy model learning the structure of inputs-reservoir responses. They also proposed a method to use physical well locations and well-to-well connectivity as the input variables, which increased the prediction accuracy. The Fast-Marching Method (FMM) introduced by Sethian (1996) was used to calculate the propagation of the pressure front and could be expressed as eqn (2):
![]() | (2) |
Injecting CO2 into shale gas reservoirs is also known as one type of CCUS. When the pressure and temperature is high, CO2 will have a higher adsorption capacity than methane, especially in the micropore volume fraction, thus enhance gas recovery. Researches regarding CO2 sequestration and shale gas recovery with ML applications focus on the prediction of kerogen components and types,252 methane/CO2 adsorption capacity,253–256 and process optimisation.237 The types, molecular components, and structures of shale kerogen directly influence its adsorption and hydrocarbon generation. Kang et al.9 proposed a method to combine ML with nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectra to predict the kerogen components and types in shale. NMR spectrum was used as the inputs since the kerogen molecule's carbon skeleton information was mainly concerned.256 The 2D spectrum was firstly converted into a 1D matrix where the values representing the NMR spectrum's normalized values, and then was fed into fully connected neural networks (FCNNs). The outputs of the FCNNs were molecular structure labels corresponding to different NMR spectrums. They concluded this method gives excellent performance in the prediction of kerogen skeleton components and types. Meng et al.253 utilised classical approaches and ML approaches in the forecasting of the methane adsorption in shale. Amar et al.254 applied gene expression programming (GEP) and group method of data handling (GMDH) to predict methane adsorption in shale gas formations. The pressure, temperature, total organic carbon, and moisture were considered as input parameters, while gas content (expressed in SCF per ton) was the models’ single output. Bemani et al.255 estimated the adsorption capacity of CO2, CH4 and CO2/CH4 mixture in shale through an ML-based approach. They utilised the LS-SVM to mimic the relationship between four inputs (pressure, temperature, gas composition and TOC) to the gas adsorption capacity. Wang et al.256 utilised different ML algorithms to predict the adsorbed shale gas content using reservoir temperature, TOC, vitrinite reflectance, Langmuir pressure, and Langmuir volume. The methods used include MLR, SVM, RF and ANN. Almasov et al.237 optimized the CO2 Huff-N-Puff Process in a shale oil reservoir. The NPV was calculated using proxies trained through LS-SVR and GPR. The well control parameters were then optimized to have the optimal NPV.
CO2 can also be utilised to produce the building materials through CO2 mineralisation. Machine learning is a powerful tool to predict the durability and performance of concrete. Taffese et al.274 applied ANN, DT and ensemble methods to predict the carbonation depth with rationally low error, and the ML models indicated that the CaPrM model can help designers to optimise the concrete mix or structural design as well as to define proactive maintenance plan. Song et al.275 developed a machine-learning-aided platform (ANNs) to enable the rapid, accurate, and high-throughput screening of fly ashes by predicting a structure-based proxy for their reactivity solely on the basis of bulk chemical composition, which has potential to maximise the beneficial utilisation of fly ashes such as CO2 adsorbents and construction materials.
One critical reason for the employment of ML technologies is to construct input–output relations when some critical information is missed or fundamental theory is unclear, which is challenging through traditional approaches. Studies have been performed on how to monitor and detect CO2 leakage in CCS projects using ML techniques with direct or in-direct monitoring data. The data used include seismic data, downhole monitoring information (such as pressure or TDS), porosity and permeability maps, and injection/production rate, etc. Some studies focused on employing ML to predict MMP that is a critical parameter for CO2-EOR. When coupling CO2-EOR and CCS, ML-based surrogate models (proxies) have been developed to mimic the original high-fidelity numerical models and to realise part of their functions. This can reduce computational overhead and accelerate exponentially those time-consuming jobs, such as running tens or hundreds of simulations to optimise development schedules or performing uncertainty analysis.
It is important to recognise that ML has been utilised in numerous studies regarding CO2 storage, utilisation and CO2-EOR, however, there are still expectations that a more universal workflow will be generated to handle the whole process of a CO2-EOR-CCS project including data interpretation, storage effect modelling, leakage detection and optimisation jobs, etc. Researchers and scientists are also encouraged to study increasing the computational accuracy when building ML-based surrogate models to substitute the original model. Effective use of databases when applying ML warrants further studies.
ML is also widely applied in CO2 transportation and storage. It can be incorporated through low-cost sensing techniques to find the hidden relationships in large, complex, and multivariate datasets, to measure the gas–liquid two-phase CO2 flow with high accuracy and detect leakages during CO2 transportation. For ML in CO2 storage, several ML algorithms have been used to investigate the effects of trapping mechanisms on the dispersal and migration of the CO2 plume, to predict and monitor CO2 leaking to ensure the safe and long-term storage of injected CO2 and create the surrogate models for the optimisation of CO2 CCS-EOR process and uncertainty analysis.
The distinct advantages of applying ML in CCS are that it provides the potential to identify links between data/results that aren’t readily identifiable, and it also provides alternative lower computing cost pathways. Researchers in CCS can apply ML to accelerate the design and development of materials for CO2 separation and conversion, measure the multiphase CO2 flow, evaluate the trapping mechanisms for CO2 storage, and develop the surrogate model for process optimisation and uncertainty analysis. It is important to mention that ML is a data-driven method, which always requires a large quantity of data to develop a generalised and robust model. The quality of training dataset, the selections of input–output features and the type of ML algorithms play a vital role to develop a comprehensive model. As mentioned before, researchers have illustrated suitable methods for feature selection, avoiding the overfitting, and issues with small datasets, when applying ML in CCUS. With the development of ML in CCUS, it is expected that ML will be an efficient and vital tool to accelerate the development of cost-effective CCUS systems to tackle the climate change.
K G a | Mass-transfer coefficient |
ω | Acentric factor |
Na-Phe | Sodium salt of L-phenylalanine |
3DMA1P | 3-Dimethylamino-1-propanol |
R 2 | Coefficient of determination |
C P | Heat capacity |
α | Diffusivity |
τ | Diffusive time of flight in the Fourier domain |
AAD | Average absolute deviation |
AARD% | Average absolute relative deviation in percent |
ANFIS | Adaptive network-based fuzzy inference system |
ABC | Artificial bee colony |
AE | Acoustic emission |
AI | Artificial intelligence |
ANN | Artificial neural network |
ARIMA | Autoregressive integrated moving average |
BPNN | Back-propagation neural network |
BR | Bayesian regularization |
BECCS | Biomass energy with carbon capture and storage |
BB | Box–Behnken |
CCS | Carbon capture and storage |
CCUS | Carbon capture, utilisation and storage |
CLC | Chemical-looping combustion |
CFB | Circulating fluidised bed |
CART | Classification and regression tree |
CAMD | Computer-aided molecular design |
CSA | Concentration swing adsorption |
CNN | Convolutional neural networks |
COFs | Covalent organic frameworks |
CSS | Cyclic-steady state |
DFT | Density functional theory |
DTs | Decision trees |
DBN | Deep belief network |
DNN | Deep neural network |
DQN | Deep Q network |
DQL | Deep Q-learning |
DBSCAN | Density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise |
DOE | Design of experiments |
DAC | Direct air capture |
DFB | Dual-fluidised bed |
ESA | Electric swing adsorption |
EOR | Enhanced oil recovery |
EOS | Equation of state |
EU-ETS | European Union Emission Trading Scheme |
ELM | Extreme learning machine |
FMM | Fast-marching method |
FWU | Farnsworth unit |
GRU | Gate recurrent unit |
GPR | Gaussian process regression |
GRNN | General regression neural network |
GA | Genetic algorithm |
GA-ANN | Genetic algorithm-artificial neural network |
GP | Genetic programming |
GCS | Geological carbon sequestration |
GBR | Gradient boosted regression |
GCMC | Grand Canonical Monte Carlo |
SRM_G | Grid-based surrogate reservoir model |
GC | Group contribution |
GMDH | Group method of data handling |
GRU | Gate recurrent unit |
GVF | Gas volume fraction |
HPT | Harmonic pulse testing |
HDMR | High dimensional model representation |
IPC | Intelligent predictive controller |
IFT | Interfacial tension |
ILs | Ionic liquids |
KSVM | Kernel support vector machine |
LHS | Latin hypercube sampling |
LS-SVM | Least square support vector machine |
LSTM | Long short-term memory |
LMA | Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm |
LUT | Look up table |
ML | Machine learning |
MAPLE | Machine-assisted adsorption process learner and emulator |
MDP | Markov decision process |
MAE | Mean absolute error |
MERQ | Material, energy, rate and equilibrium |
MADS | Mesh adaptive direct search |
MESH | Mass, equilibrium summation and enthalpy |
MOFs | Metal–organic frameworks |
MSA | Microwave swing adsorption |
MMP | Minimum miscibility pressure |
MIP | Mixed-integer programming |
MD | Molecular dynamics simulations |
MM | Molecular mechanically |
MEA | Monoethanolamine |
MC | Monte Carlo |
MLP | Multi-layer perceptron |
MLP-ANN | Multi-layer perceptron artificial neural network |
MLP-LMA | Multi-layer perceptron Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm |
MARS | Multivariate adaptive regression splines |
MLR | Multivariate linear regression |
NRAP | National risk assessment partnership |
NDCs | Nationally determined contributions |
NET | Negative emissions technologies |
MDEA | N-Methyl diethanolamine |
NLP | Non-linear programming |
PDE | Partial differential equations |
PLS | Partial least-squares |
PLSR | Partial least squares regression |
PMI | Partial mutual information |
PSO | Particle swarm optimization |
PI | Permutation importance |
PZ | Piperazine |
PCE | Polynomial chaos expansion |
PRSM | Polynomial response surface method |
POCs | Porous organic cages |
PSA | Pressure swing adsorption |
PCA | Principal component analysis |
PCA–RWN | Principal component analysis and random weight network |
PCR | Principal component regression |
QSPR/QSAR | Quantitative-structure property/activity relationship |
QM | Quantum-mechanically |
RBF | Radial basis function |
RBFNN | Radial basis function neural network |
RF | Random forest |
RNN | Recurrent neural network |
ROM | Reduced-order models |
RL | Reinforcement learning |
ROZ | Residual oil zones |
RSM | Response surface methodology |
RMSE | Root mean square error |
RPB | Rotating packed bed |
SCG | Scaled conjugate gradient |
SQP | Sequential quadratic programming algorithm |
SMR | Steam methane reforming |
SE-SMR | Sorption enhanced steam methane reforming |
SVM | Support vector machine |
SVMr | SVM with a radial basis kernel |
SVR | Support vector regression |
TLBO-RBF | Teaching–learning-based optimization hybrid model |
TRL | Technology readiness level |
TSA | Temperature swing adsorption |
TVSA | Temperature-vacuum swing adsorption |
TGA | Thermogravimetric analysis |
TDS | Total dissolved solids |
VSA | Vacuum swing adsorption |
VLE | Vapour–liquid equilibrium |
WAG | Water alternating gas |
SRM_W | Well-based surrogate reservoir model |
ZIFs | Zeolitic imidazolate frameworks |
This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2021 |