THREE-YEAR PHD PROJECTS
Seeking one candidate
Engineering PhD Studentships in Carbon Storage (£18,000pa)
Supervisors: Sam Krevor
Start date: October, 2013
CO
2
Sequestration: Reactive transport in the carbonate rock/water/CO
2 system
The greatest scientific and technological challenge of this century is how to provide energy to a growing global population, while avoiding dangerous climate change.
The storage of CO
2
in deep subsurface geologic reservoirs is broadly recognized as essential for major greenhouse gas emissions reductions, including assessments made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Commission on
European Communities, and the United States Department of Energy.
Geochemical processes, such as rock matrix dissolution, mineral precipitation, and inter-fluid mass transfer will have important impacts on reservoir quality and storage integrity during the injection of CO
2
into carbonate reservoirs. While fundamental mineral/water chemical interactions are well described for simple crystals in the carbonate system, processes involving chemical reaction and fluid flow through porous media are poorly understood. For example, even when relevant reaction rate parameters, such as reactive surface area and mineralogy appear well constrained in the field, discrepancies by a factor of 100 or more persist in estimated mineral reaction rates between field and laboratory observations. This precludes accurate prediction of field-scale geochemical processes and presents a major challenge for modeling CO
2
sequestration in carbonate reservoirs.
This project will use core and pore-scale experiments and models to investigate the interplay of advective and diffusive reactant transport, pore morphology, and mineralogical heterogeneity on chemical reactions during fluid flow through reactive porous carbonate rocks. Specific goals of the project will be the development and use of experimental methods and modeling for the characterization of reactive surface area, pore-scale fluid residence times, and observation of chemical reaction during coreflooding experiments under varying conditions of fluid flow and chemical composition. An ultimate goal of this work is to use these observations in the development of upscaling techniques for accurate and efficient modeling of chemical processes during flow in porous media. The project will utilize results from ongoing fundamental mineral dissolution and precipitation rate studies and state of the art laboratory facilities including ambient and high-

pressure coreflooding equipment, micro and medical x-ray CT scanners, and standard analysis equipment (mass spectrometry, electron and confocal microscopy, ion chromatography, etc.). These studies will be extended to investigate the impact that these processes have on single and multiphase fluid flow properties as per the progress and interests of the student.
The posts are funded through major long-term support from Qatar Petroleum and
Shell International for the Qatar Carbonates and Carbon Storage Research Centre
(QCCSRC). This Centre is enabling Imperial College London to expand its research into Clean Fossil Fuels significantly - aimed in particular at improving the energy efficiency of oil and gas recovery, closely coupled with reducing greenhouse gas emissions through advanced carbon capture and storage technologies. The Centre is a collaboration between the Department of Earth Science and Engineering and the
Department of Chemical Engineering.
The successful applicants will be encouraged to collaborate with other QCCSRC team members and other academic staff members, publish the research results in internationally recognised peer reviewed journals and present the research results at relevant national and international scientific and professional conferences, and sponsor meetings.
We are looking for students with an outstanding academic record in applied mathematics, physical science or engineering. We have full funding for European
Union and overseas students.
Informal inquiries about the positions can be made to: Dr Sam Krevor, Lecturer, s.krevor@imperial.ac.uk. All applications are to be made on-line.
Information about the research centre is available at the Department of Earth
Science and Engineering: www.imperial.ac.uk/earthscienceandengineering and the Department of Chemical Engineering: http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/earthscienceandengineering