Bayesian Optimization for Field-Scale Geological Carbon Storage

Abstract

We present a framework that couples a high-fidelity compositional reservoir simulator with Bayesian optimization (BO) for injection well scheduling optimization in geological carbon sequestration. This work represents one of the first at tempts to apply BO and high-fidelity physics models to geological carbon storage. The implicit parallel accurate reservoir simulator (IPARS) is utilized to accurately capture the underlying physical processes during $ {CO_2} $ sequestration. IPARS provides a framework for several flow and mechanics models and thus supports both stand-alone and coupled simulations. In this work, we use the compositional flow module to simulate the geological carbon storage process. The compositional flow model, which includes a hysteretic three-phase relative permeability model, accounts for three major $ {CO_2} $ trapping mechanisms: structural trapping, residual gas trapping, and solubility trapping. Furthermore, IPARS is coupled to the International Business Machines (IBM) Corporation Bayesian Optimization Accelerator (BOA) for parallel optimizations of $ {CO_2} $ injection strategies during field-scale $ {CO_2} $ sequestration. BO builds a probabilistic surrogate for the objective function using a Bayesian machine learning algorithm—the Gaussian process regression, and then uses an acquisition function that leverages the uncertainty in the surrogate to decide where to sample. The IBM BOA addresses the three weaknesses of standard BO that limits its scalability in that IBM BOA supports parallel (batch) executions, scales better for high-dimensional problems, and is more robust to initializations. We demonstrate these merits by applying the algorithm in the optimization of the $ {CO_2} $ injection schedule in the Cranfield site in Mississippi, USA, using field data. The optimized injection schedule achieves 16% more gas storage volume and 56% less water/surfactant usage compared with the baseline. The performance of BO is compared with that of a genetic algorithm (GA) and a covariance matrix adaptation (CMA)-evolution strategy (ES). The results demonstrate the superior performance of BO, in that it achieves a competitive objective function value with over 60% fewer forward model evaluations.