Experimental Setup for Evaluating Rock Volume Alteration and Its Application for Studying Shale Rock Swelling in Various Fluids

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Experimental setup for evaluating rock volume alteration and its application for studying shale rock swelling in various fluids

By Yunusov et al.

1. Abstract: should the authors define how they quantify the “rock swelling” to be more informative and understandable to the readership.
2. Introduction: the authors have a good review on many factors affecting the rock swelling. This includes fines migration and CO2 sequestration. I suggest to further review some papers below if they could help to improve the quality of the manuscript.
   383. Bedrikovetsky, P., Siqueira, F. D., Furtado, C. A., & Souza, A. L. S. (2011). Modified particle detachment model for colloidal transport in porous media. Transport in porous media, 86(2), 353-383.
   384. Tangparitkul, S., Saul, A., Leelasukseree, C., Yusuf, M., & Kalantariasl, A. (2020). Fines migration and permeability decline during reservoir depletion coupled with clay swelling due to low-salinity water injection: An analytical study. Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering, 194, 107448.
   385. Wang, Y., Bedrikovetsky, P., Yin, H., Othman, F., Zeinijahromi, A., & Le-Hussain, F. (2022). Analytical model for fines migration due to mineral dissolution during CO2 injection. Journal of Natural Gas Science and Engineering, 100, 104472.
   386. Thanasaksukthawee, V., Santha, N., Saenton, S., Tippayawong, N., Jaroonpattanapong, P., Foroozesh, J., & Tangparitkul, S. (2022). Relative CO2 Column Height for CO2 Geological Storage: A Non-Negligible Contribution from Reservoir Rock Characteristics. Energy & Fuels.
3. More descriptive details and suppliers for materials used should be included.
4. Page 8 Lines 267 – 268: The authors discussed that the clay swelling here is exothermic with releasing energy. How such a concurrent effect be eliminate to explicitly observe the pH considered per se?
5. 5 and 7: the plots should be labelled to better illustrate its purpose since the authors could not find a direct correlation here but dependence of clay minerals.
6. What is the benefit of fitting the swelling volume results as in Fig. 4? Obviously the authors cannot do the same with Fig. 6 data. Is the fluctuation on the observed volume just the re-construction or rearrangement of the granular rock while under some condition?
7. I am not sure the data scattering in Fig. 8 suggesting any correlation.!
8. Again, fitting data in Fig. 10b does not make any senses.
9. Writing is understandable but native-English speaker proof is suggested.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors established an experimental device for evaluating rock volume alteration and studied its application in different types of shale expansion.The article is interesting and has some application value,However, the article needs some revisions before it can be published：

(1) The author should explain the core depth of the rock sample, because the properties of the rock sample are different at different depths;

(2) Figure 6, which should be promoted, looks hard to read right now.

(3) The reason for the low volume expansion coefficient obtained in the experiment is suggested to be described in detail by the author, which is of concern to the reader.

(4) Figure 6 also has certain rules to follow, and the author can try to describe this change relationship by piecewise function.

(5) In the formation, fluids are complex and varied, and shale expands with the intrusion of many fluids rather than a single fluid. The author may attempt to study this in the future.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have revised and addressed my comments. I satisfy with the revision.