Sustainability Webinar Series is a platform for raising scientific engagement on the complexity of sustainability.
S Square is excited to invite you to the first webinar of this semester on September 15, 2020 (3:00 to 4:00 p.m.) titled Carbon Geological Storage by professor J. Carlos Santamarina.
Register here!
Abstract
Today’s energy concerns reflect the large anticipated increase in demand within the next 25 years, the current dependency on fossil fuels and climate implications, the geographic mismatch between resources and demand, and the disparity in associated time scales. The long-term geological storage of vast quantities of CO2 is a relatively new scientific and technological challenge, plagued with underlying coupled hydro-chemo-thermo-mechanical processes and potential emergent phenomena. Processes include: fluid-fluid solubility, density changes and viscous effects; capillarity; acidification, mineral dissolution and precipitation, and ensuing changes in permeability; phase transformations; and stress changes. Dimensionless ratios help identify the domain for the various dominant processes that govern CO2 geo-storage. These processes affect CO2 storage in saline aquifers, coal seams, depleted reservoirs (and EOR), CO2-CH4 substitution in clathrates, both insitu and exsitu mineralization (onshore and offshore), and the long-term performance of wells and seals. The understanding of underlying processes guides alternatives to improved displacement efficiency, leak-sealing strategies, and monitoring choices (using either active seismic and electromagnetic methods, as well as passive seismic, deformation, and thermal sensing).
About the Speaker
J. Carlos Santamarina is a professor of Energy Resources and Petroleum Engineering at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Associate Director of the Ali I. Al-Naimi Petroleum Engineering Research. He graduated from Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, University of Maryland, and Purdue University. He taught at NYU–Polytechnic University, University of Waterloo, and Georgia Tech before joining KAUST. Santamarina’s research team explores the foundations of subsurface processes using particle- and pore-scale testing methods combined with high geophysical monitoring and analytical/numerical solutions. This research approach supports developments in the field of energy geotechnology, with contributions to resource recovery as well as energy and waste geostorage.
Should you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at s.square@kaust.edu.sa.