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studies related to deep waste injection

Chin-Fu Tsang and Dmitriy B. Silin

Contact: Chin-Fu Tsang, 510/486-5782, CFTsang@lbl.gov

Research Objectives

The main purpose of the Underground Waste Injection Project at Berkeley Lab is to develop new scientific approaches and methods related to underground injection of liquid wastes and to advise the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on scientific aspects of injection regulation and the permit process. In 2003, as part of this project, an international symposium on underground injection science and technology will be organized, with attendees from 15 countries. One technical development in 2003 is the demonstration of the possibility of estimating the formation’s hydraulic properties using regular operations data, to replace the currently required annual shut-in tests. This possibility is discussed below.

To continue reading more about this project, view the 1-page pdf here.

Hourly injection pressures from a deep injection well at an Ohio EPA site. Besides measured pressures (circles), the plot includes six matching curves obtained using ODA on different data intervals. All six curves practically collapse. Outside of the data matching intervals, the calculated curves provide accurate pressure predictions.