CO2 Storage at the Ketzin Pilot Site, Germany: Fourth Year of Injection, Monitoring, Modelling and Verification

At Ketzin, located west of Berlin, the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences operates Europe's longest- running on-shore CO 2 storage site. The Ketzin pilot site has been developed since 2004 and comprises three wells to depths of 750 m to 800 m and one shallow observation well, an injection facility and permanently installed monitoring devices. Since June 2008, CO 2 is injected into 630 m to 650 m deep sandstone units (Upper Triassic Stuttgart Formation) in an anticlinal structure of the Northeast German Basin. Until mid of May 2012, about 61,400 t of CO 2 have been stored safely. One of the most comprehensive monitoring concepts worldwide is applied and capable of detecting the behaviour of the CO 2 in the subsurface. The Ketzin project demonstrates safe CO 2 storage in a saline aquifer on a research scale and effective monitoring. This paper summarizes the key results obtained after four years of CO 2 injection.