Description:

Clay, Water, and Salt: Controls on the Permeability and Mechanics of Fine-Grained Porous Media

Abstract:
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) relies on the ability to trap supercritical CO2 in the subsurface for decades to millennia. A predominant role in this trapping is played by laterally extensive low-permeability formations that overlie the storage formations. At most existing or planned CCS sites, these formations consist of fine-grained sedimentary rock such as shales or mudstones. Predictions of CO2 storage security require predictive models of the permeability of these formations. Ongoing research in the Bourg group relies on a combination of simulation methodologies, at scales ranging from the atomistic to the core scale, to elucidate the feedbacks between chemistry, mechanics, and transport that control the flow of fluids in clay-rich porous materials such as soils, sediments, sedimentary rocks, and engineered clay barriers.

Biography
Ian Bourg is an Assistant Professor in CEE at Princeton University. His group studies the properties of water at interfaces, with a particular emphasis on the impact of clay minerals on hydrology, mechanics, and geochemistry of soils and sedimentary media. He obtained his Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley in 2004 and served as a Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory until 2014 before joining the faculty at Princeton University.