Creep of Basalts Undergoing Carbonation: Effect of Rock-Fluid Interaction

Geological carbon sequestration provides permanent CO₂ storage to mitigate the current high concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere. CO₂ mineralization in basalts has been proven to be one of the most secure storage options. For successful implementation and future improvements of this technology, the time-dependent deformation behavior of basalts in presence of reactive fluids needs to be studied in detail. We conducted load stepping creep experiments on basalts from the CarbFix site (Iceland) under several pore fluid conditions (dry, H₂O-saturated and H₂O+CO₂-saturated) at temperature, T≈80°C and effective pressure, P_eff = 50 MPa, during which we collected mechanical, acoustic and pore fluid chemistry data. We observed transient creep at stresses as low as 11% of the ultimate failure strength, well below the stress level at the onset of bulk dilatancy. Acoustic emissions (AEs) correlated strongly with strain accumulation, indicating that the creep deformation was a brittle process in agreement with microstructural observations. The rate and magnitude of AEs were higher in fluid-saturated experiments than in dry conditions. The creep data can be empirically fitted using either a log - time or power law time model with stress dependent fitting parameters. We infer that the predominant mechanism governing creep deformation is time- and stress-dependent sub-critical dilatant cracking. Our results suggest that the presence of aqueous fluids exerts first order control on creep deformation of basaltic rocks, while the composition of the fluids plays only a secondary role under the studied conditions.