Measurements of water vapor adsorption on the Geysers rocks

The ORNL high temperature isopiestic apparatus was adapted for adsorption measurements. The quantity of water retained by rock samples taken from three different wells of The Geysers was measured at 150 °C and at 200 °C as a function of pressure in the range 0.00 ≤ p/p₀ ≤ 0.98, where p₀ is the saturated water vapor pressure. The rocks were crushed and sieved into three fractions of different grain sizes (with different specific surface areas). Both adsorption (increasing pressure) and desorption (decreasing pressure) runs were made in order to investigate the nature and extent of the hysteresis. Additionally, BET surface area analyses were performed by Porous Materials Inc. on the same rock samples using nitrogen or krypton adsorption measurements at 77 K. Specific surface areas and pore volumes were determined. These parameters are important in estimating water retention capability of a porous material. The same laboratory also determined the densities of the samples by helium pycnometry. Their results were then compared with our own density values obtained by measuring the effect of buoyancy in compressed argon. One of the goals of this project is to determine the dependence of the water retention capacity of the rocks as a function of temperature. The results show a significant dependence of the adsorption and desorption isotherms on the grain size of the sample. The increase in the amount of water retained with temperature observed previously (Shang et al., 1994a, 1994b, 1995) between 90 and 130°C for various reservoir rocks from The Geysers may be due to the contribution of slow chemical adsorption and may be dependent on the time allowed for equilibration. In contrast with the results of Shang et al. (1994a, 1994b, 1995), some closed and nearly closed hysteresis loops on the water adsorption/desorption isotherms (with closing points at p/p₀ ≈ 0.6) were obtained in this study. In these cases the effects of activated processes were not present, and no increase in water adsorption with temperature was observe