Dr. Steve Higgins recently received a 3-year grant from the US Department of Energy to study the long-term behavior of rocks and minerals exposed to CO2-bearing fluids in an effort to test the viability of various proposed geologic containment strategies. His project titled "Kinetic complexity of mineral-water interface reactions relevant to CO2 sequestration: Atomic-scale reactions to macroscale processes" involves a collaborative effort between WSU and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The project will utilize Scanning Probe Microscopy (SPM) in conjunction with Vertical Scanning Interferometry and reactor-scale investigations (1) to describe how mineral topographic relaxation occurs and relate these observables to the rate and mechanism of fluid-mineral interaction, (2) to understand how the surface reactivity of a mineral varies as a function of orientation, and (3) to describe how grain morphology evolves with exposure time. Corresponding macro-scale experiments will be employed to assess performance of nanometer-scale models across larger length and time scales and to predict behavior of CO2 sequestration systems by forward modeling for the thousands to perhaps tens of thousands of years over which gas containment must be evaluated.
