Dr F Doster
No more applications being accepted
Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
About the Project
This PhD project would contribute to an interdisciplinary programme of research with the University of Edinburgh spanning across the production chain of CO2 captured from fossil fuel use, transport to injection in geological formation. The programme of research addresses two key challenges: 1) The advanced integration of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) infrastructure into an increasingly complex energy system, notably the cycling of flows in the transport and storage infrastructure caused by effects of priority dispatch of variable, renewable sources of electricity, 2) the associated impacts of flow variability and intermittency on the integration of CO2-Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) into the CCS network infrastructure.
Edinburgh University have developed tools for a whole CCS-chain analysis as part of the FLECCSNET consortium, which can be used to understand CO2 supply variability over different timescales in the context of EOR. These tools include simple representations of potential storage sites. While these representations are suited for first qualitative assessments in pure storage sites with constant CO2 supply, these representations are insufficient for intermittent CO2 supply or CO2-EOR processes.
In this PhD project, we will develop reduced complexity models for CO2-EOR as well as for intermittent CO2 supply, using dynamic boundary flow conditions originating from the work at Edinburgh University. These analytical tools are useful to the wider CCS R&D community to capture the behaviour of sub-surface in full CCS chain models. The models will account for multi-phase multi-component flow phenomena including buoyant migration and the different viscous displacement regimes and capture varying injection rates and impurities. They will serve as individual tools to explore storage concepts and will also be coupled in through boundary conditions to the surface network analysis tools. We will expand on methodology (analytical and semi-analytical solutions) that has previously been developed by us for aquifers and amend it by approaches taken from the literature [NC12]. Those models will be evaluated and tested against published field and simulation experience [SCCS15] as well as own runs with MRST and CMG software (IMEX, GEM).
Funding Notes
Scholarships will cover tuition fees and provide an annual stipend of approximately £14,500 (at the RCUK approved rate) for the 36 month duration of the project.
To be eligible, applicants should have a first-class honours degree in a relevant subject or a 2.1 honours degree plus Masters (or equivalent). Scholarships will be awarded by competitive merit, taking into account the academic ability of the applicant.
References
[NC12] Nordbotten & Celia (2012). Geological Storage of CO_2: Modeling Approaches for Large-Scale Simulation. Wiley.
[FLECCSNET] Website: https://ukccsrc.ac.uk/resources/ccs-projects-directory/flexible-ccs-network-development-fleccsnet
[SCCS15] Scottish Carbon, Capture and Storage (2015). CO2 storage and enhanced oil recovery in the North Sea: Securing a low carbon energy future for the UK, University of Edinburgh Report, ISBN: 978-0-9927483-2-6