Wettability is one of the main parameters controlling CO₂ injectivity and the movement of CO₂ plume during geological CO₂ sequestration. Despite significant research efforts, there is still a high uncertainty associated with the wettability of CO₂/brine/rock systems and how they evolve with CO₂ exposure. This study, therefore, aims to measure the contact angle of sandstone samples with varying clay content before and after laboratory core flooding at different reservoir pressures, of 10 MPa and 15 MPa, and a temperature of 323 K. The samples’ microstructural changes are also assessed to investigate any potential alteration in the samples’ structure due to carbonated water exposure. The results show that the advancing and receding contact angles increased with the increasing pressure for both the Berea and Bandera Gray samples. Moreover, the results indicate that Bandera Gray sandstone has a higher contact angle. The sandstones also turn slightly more hydrophobic after core flooding, indicating that the sandstones become more CO₂-wet after CO₂ injection. These results suggest that CO₂ flooding leads to an increase in the CO₂-wettability of sandstone, and thus an increase in vertical CO₂ plume migration and solubility trapping, and a reduction in the residual trapping capacity, especially when extrapolated to more prolonged field-scale injection and exposure times.

Wettability of rock–fluid systems is an important for controlling the carbon dioxide (CO2) movement and the capacities of CO2 geological trapping mechanisms. Although contact angle measurement is considered a potentially scalable parameter for evaluation of the wettability characteristics, there are still large uncertainties associated with the contact angle measurement for CO2–brine–rock systems. Thus, this study experimentally examined the wettability, before and after flooding, of two different samples of sandstone: Berea and Bandera grey sandstones. For both samples, several sets of flooding of brine (5 wt % NaCl + 1 wt % KCl in deionised water), CO2-saturated (live) brine and supercritical CO2 were performed. The contact angle measurements were conducted for the CO2–sandstone system at two different reservoir pressures (10 and 15 MPa) and at a reservoir temperature of 323 K. The results showed that both the advancing and receding contact angles of the sandstone samples after flooding were higher than that measured before flooding (i.e. after CO2 injection the sandstones became more CO2-wet). Moreover, the Bandera grey samples had higher contact angles than Berea sandstone. Thus, we conclude that CO2 flooding altered the sandstone wettability to be more CO2-wet, and Berea sandstone had a higher CO2 storage capacity than Bandera grey sandstone.