UWs Center for Fundamentals of Subsurface Flow to Host Third Workshop

An academic from Brazil and an energy professional from France will headline a University of Wyoming workshop about CO2 sequestration and natural gas flow in the subsurface.

Professor Marcio Murad, from the Brazilian National Lab for Scientific Computing (LNCC) in Brazil; and Benoit Noetinger, associate director at research at IFP Energies nouvelles, France, will be the keynote speakers for "Porous Media Flows:  Experimentation, Multi-Scale Modeling and Simulation."

The event, scheduled May 8-10 at the Hilton Garden Inn in Laramie, is hosted by UW's Center for Fundamentals of Subsurface Flow (CFSF). Approximately 40-50 are expected to attend the workshop, which begins at noon May 8.

The workshop registration deadline is April 20. While the workshop is primarily for academics and oil and gas industry professionals, the public is invited to attend.

For more information and to register, visit https://www.uwyo.edu/ser/conferences/workshop-unconventional-resources/index.html. For registration questions, contact Kelly Garvey at serforum@uwyo.edu or call (303) 842-2617.

Murad will present "Introduction to Computational Reservoir Geomechanics" while Noetinger will present "Upscaling and Flow in Heterogeneous and Fractured Media." For details of these presentations, go to https://www.uwyo.edu/ser/conferences/workshop-unconventional-resources/index.html

"Murad is an expert in geomechanics and Noetinger specializes in upscaling problems, essentially describing a complex problem in a fine scale in a simple way on a larger scale," says Felipe Pereira, a professor of mathematics in UW's School of Energy Resources and CFSF associate director.

Additionally, the workshop will consist of presentations from research groups composed of UW faculty members that have been funded by the CFSF. The CFSF was created in 2010 through the combined efforts of a dozen UW faculty members in chemical and petroleum engineering, geography and geophysics, and mathematics.

The CFSF conducts and integrates advanced experimentation and modeling of multi-phase flow in porous media to ensure future access to subsurface energy resources and carbon storage resources.

Several UW professors submitted research proposals in April 2010 to the CFSF.

Proposals were related to the following topics:

• Recovery of natural gas from unconventional reservoirs characterized by low permeability. Permeability determines how fast oil or natural gas can move through the pore space. Research activities focus on improving understanding of permeability distribution, connectivity and flow pathways than can be used to improve oil reservoir models and field design.
• Sequestration of greenhouse gas and associated impurities in geological formations, including deep saline aquifers, and oil and gas reservoirs. These research activities focus on improving understanding of underlying phenomena responsible for various GGI (Greenhouse Gas and Assorted Impurities) geological storage mechanisms that can be used to develop or improve predictive modeling tools.

Awards were made to six proposals. Graduate and post-doctoral students who worked on this research with UW faculty (who served as principal investigators on the projects) will make presentations at the workshop.

"The goals of the workshop are to discuss the most recent (research) results, establish goals and discuss the most recent developments," Pereira says. "We have very exciting research from these six groups. We have new experimental science, modeling and simulation."

For a list of presentation titles and primary investigators, go to https://www.uwyo.edu/cfsf/funding-opportunities/ggi.html.

Additionally, workshop attendees can take short courses (approximately four hours) on upscaling in heterogeneous and fractured media, and reservoir geomechanics.