Environmental Sciences Ph.D. Program

Soltanian wins Geological Society of America award

Reza Soltanian, an Environmental Sciences Ph.D. student working under the guidance of Prof. Bob Ritzi in Earth and Environmental Sciences, recently received a $1500 grant from the Geological Society of America for his research on carbon sequestration.  Reza's abstract is included below. 

Congratulations to Reza!

Understanding the Impact of Hierarchical and Multi-Scale Sedimentary Architecture on CO2 Sequestration

Injecting CO2 into oil reservoirs and deep saline aquifers is an option to mitigate global warming by trapping CO2. Capillary trapping is a vital process in sequestrating CO2. The parameters which locally define capillary trapping are heterogeneous (e.g., capillary pressure, relative permeability), and their spatial variation follows the hierarchical and multi-scale sedimentary architecture of the reservoir. Simulations of CO2 sequestration are often not guided by a full knowledge of the heterogeneity-impacted flow dynamics across all relevant scales. The goal of this study is to use a new field quantified, 3D, hierarchical facies based model for sedimentary architecture in a multiphase reservoir simulator to study CO2 trapping mechanisms in an oil reservoir. We hypothesize that numerical simulations representing sedimentary architecture at different scales, and facies-dependent relative permeability and capillary pressure curves lead to a better understanding of CO2 capillary trapping.