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Advanced Carbon Mineralization Initiative (ACMI)
To meet 1.5-2 degrees Celsius warming targets, society must develop carbon management technologies for the irreversible removal and storage of gigatons of CO2 from point sources and the atmosphere. The conversion of carbon dioxide into carbonate minerals, “CO2 mineralization,” can play a fundamental role in carbon management technologies, as it is thermodynamically favorable and scalable. However, the long timescales and poor predictability of CO2 mineralization impede widespread utilization. There is thus an urgent need to accelerate mineralization kinetics and capacity. We believe we can lay the foundations for enhanced mineralization technologies by developing and synthesizing mechanistic understanding from geology, chemistry,… read more…
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CO2 Migration along Faults in CCS Projects: Field Validation and Stochastic Modeling of Fault Properties
A proper assessment of CO2 migration along and across faults is a key requirement for site selection, injection management, and design of a monitoring, mitigation, and verification (MMV) program. As part of this project, we have developed numerical capabilities aimed at addressing this technical challenge. The capabilities include (i) a novel algorithm to determine fault permeability and its distribution on two- and three-dimensional faults based on local stratigraphy and fault throw (PREDICT), (ii) a coupled reservoir-geomechanical modeling approach to simulate CO2 injection and migration along faults, and (iii) the application of this capability to case studies in offshore sedimentary formations.… read more…
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Coupled flow-geomechanical models applied to assess earthquake triggering in tectonically active regions – The Los Angeles basin, CA
Earthquakes caused by human activities are a growing societal concern affecting hydrocarbon and geothermal energy production, gas storage, and subsurface carbon sequestration efforts in the United States and throughout the world. Distinguishing between tectonic and induced earthquakes in tectonically active regions is extremely challenging. Moreover, induced seismicity in these regions pose greater risks, as human activities may trigger larger and more destructive earthquakes. Our project is developing state-of-the-art, physics-based models to investigate how nearly a century of production and waste-water injection in hydrocarbon fields of the Los Angeles basin, California, have impacted the stability of faults in the area. These… read more…
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Critical Minerals of the Laramide Porphyry Belt, Southwest USA
The U.S.–Mexico borderlands, spanning Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Sonora, Chihuahua, and Sinaloa, make up one of the world’s most important copper regions. Alongside copper, these porphyry systems also contain a wide range of critical minerals such as gallium, indium, cobalt, tellurium, tungsten, and platinum-group elements—materials essential for clean energy, electronics, and advanced technologies. Despite their importance, the distribution of these critical minerals is still poorly understood. Existing geochemical data are incomplete, inconsistent, and vary in quality, making it difficult to evaluate the full potential of these mineral systems. A clearer, more systematic picture is needed to guide future research and… read more…
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Developing Adaptive Traffic Light Systems For Enhanced Geothermal Systems
Induced seismicity is both a valuable reservoir management tool and a significant challenge, particularly for enhanced geothermal system (EGS) projects. While carefully managed seismic activity can help create and maintain fluid pathways, large earthquakes—such as those that occurred at the Basel and Pohang EGS sites—have raised public concern and highlighted the risks of large-scale deployment. Beyond avoiding damaging earthquakes, geothermal operators also aim to keep reservoir stimulation within a defined radius—typically a few hundred meters around the injection well—to maximize heat extraction from a controlled volume of rock. Effective seismic monitoring must therefore balance two key objectives: mitigating the risk of… read more…
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Electric Stimulation Model Development
Conventional geothermal energy needs pre-existing fracture networks to conduct heat from rock to water and thence convect heat to surface turbines or other uses. Very few locations, less than 10% of Earth’s land area provide this. Enhanced geothermal systems (“hot dry rock”) can be created anywhere, but require new networks to be fractured. Hydrofracturing uses enormous amounts of pressurized water to fracture rock. Electrofracturing creates an electric plasma channel, essentially subterranean lightning, to fracture rock. Replacing most of the hydrofracturing by electrofracturing promises to save hundreds of millions of liters of water per typical well. This project models the plasma-channel… read more…
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Modeling Supershear Earthquakes to Forecast Induced Seismicity Hazard
While the potential for subsurface fluid injection and extraction to trigger earthquakes has long been recognized, the sharp increase in the extent and vigor of injection-induced seismicity calls for much deeper understanding than is currently available. One of the features of some highly destructive earthquakes is their supershear rupture propagation, with velocities faster than the shear wave speed that typically lead to large magnitude events. The intensity and the patterns of strong ground motion for supershear earthquakes have been shown to be inherently different from those of regular (sub-Rayleigh) ones, calling for a need to elucidate the controlling factors behind… read more…
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Seismic Imaging, Inversion and Uncertainty Quantification
The algorithmic workhorse for creating a map of the subsurface from seismic surveys is full waveform inversion. Many fundamental questions remain wide open about it, including how to deal with the lack of convexity in optimization, how to make use of AI to speed it up or supersede it, and how to quantify the uncertainty inherent in its predictions. Among the various projects that the Imaging and Computing group has led over the years, one current topic of great interest is the convergence of AI and uncertainty quantification. We provide the first method for sampling the “epistemic” posterior of a… read more…
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The Origin and Timing of Silver Enrichment at the world-class Filo Del Sol Cu-Au-Ag deposit
As the world transitions to renewable energy, the demand for metals like silver is soaring. Silver is essential for technologies like solar panels and batteries, securing its place among critical minerals. High-sulfidation epithermal deposits are key sources of silver, gold, and copper, but understanding where and how silver-rich zones form remains a scientific challenge. At the newly discovered Filo Del Sol deposit in Argentina, researchers are using cutting-edge techniques to analyze the chemistry and age of minerals to uncover the origins of silver. This is the first time such methods are being applied together at this scale in these types… read more…
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Through-Casing Permeability Estimation: Feasibility in Simulations, Field Data and Lab Experiments
There are hundreds of thousands of inactive oil & gas wells in the USA, millions in the world that all need to be plugged and abandoned. In that process, environmental regulators require operators to certify that no well will emit methane gas or other harmful fluids. Key emission-risk factors include the Darcy permeability of rock-formation layers, the contact quality of the steel well casing with the formation, and the presence of cracks in the formation. It is prohibitively expensive to inspect the formation directly by perforating the casing, injecting fluids etc. Measurement tools in the well can transmit acoustic, electromagnetic,… read more…
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Understanding the geological conditions for hydrogen production during seafloor serpentinization in a fossil hyperextended margin
This project focuses on understanding the geological conditions for the generation of hydrogen gas during mineral transformations in ultramafic rocks situated in hyperextended passive continental margins. We sample the fossil Ocean-Continent Transition Zone of the Jurassic Tethys Ocean exposed in Italy and Switzerland, to study the role of geological structures, especially oceanic detachment faults, and petrologic variability of protolith rocks, on oxygen fugacity and hydrogen content. This will provide insights into the distribution and budget of hydrogen in a natural setting. We also conduct high-pressure high-temperature experiments aimed at simulating the hydrogen-producing reactions in the laboratory under well constrained boundary… read more…
