GCCC Summer Interns Apply Skills to CCS

This summer, the Gulf Coast Carbon Center is thrilled to work with three outstanding graduate students, Amir Kamali from the University of Oklahoma and Alexander Tarakanov and Mehrdad Alfi from Texas A&M University. Seyyed Hosseini, who is overseeing the students’ research, notes that the interns “have the opportunity to work closely with GCCC staff to learn about CCS related problems and apply their skills to solve them.”

J_5okbroXDw Alexander Tarakanov is in the final year of his Ph. D. in the Department of Petroleum Engineering in Texas A&M University. His research is focused on the Lattice-Boltzmann Method (LBM), in particular developing LBM-based numerical schemes for simulating fluid flow from pore-scale to field-scale. This summer, Alexander is applying LBM to CO₂ sequestration, with a goal of developing code to study the distribution of CO₂ in a reservoir.

Merhdad Alfi (left) has a background in chemical engineering and has just finished his third year in Texas A&M University as a Ph. D. student in Petroleum Engineering. At GCCC, Merhdad is working on canister data obtained from shale formations in order to calculate lost gas and formation permeability. He is using an analytical solution to the continuity equation for modelling gas flow inside shale media and then matching it with experimental data gathered from the drawdown process.

Amir Kamali (right) is a Ph. D. candidate whose research involves reservoir geomechanics applied to petroleum and geothermal systems. His bachelors and masters degrees are in petroleum engineering as well. This summer, Amir is developing a transient gas transport model to quantify CO₂ and CH₄ concentrations at the bottom of the water wells and throughout the wellbore itself.

2ndOffshoreGroup — Attendees of the International Workshop on Offshore hailed from Europe, Asia, and North America.

In June, GCCC hosted three events that fostered opportunities for local and international collaboration on geological carbon sequestration in the Gulf Coast.

Katherine Romanak and Tim Dixon facilitated the Second International Workshop on Offshore Geologic CO₂ Storage at the Center for Innovation, Commercialization and Entrepreneurship at Lamar University. Stakeholders from China, South Africa, Japan, Norway, France, the Netherlands, UK, Canada, and across the United States attended. Elements of this event were supported by CSLF. The complete report from the meeting is available.

Tip Meckel led a field trip that incorporated aspects of the full CCS chain: a tour of the Air Products capture facility, overviews of a midstream transport terminal including rail, vessel and pipeline transport, highlights of modern analogues of storage formations at the Texas coast, and a visit to the museum of the Gulf Coast, Port Arthur Texas.

Sue Hovorka describes the Air Products carbon capture project.

As part of the CarbonSAFE project, the event wrapped up with a workshop and open house exploring the connections and opportunities between carbon sources and sinks in the Gulf Coast hosted by Lamar University. The Department of Energy is supporting the CarbonSAFE project to look at implementing carbon capture and storage technology in the Golden Triangle Area (Beaumont-Port Arthur-Orange) of South East Texas.

GCCC would like to thank Bart Owens of GT-Omniport for generously providing lunch at their facilities on the field trip, Jeff Hayes of Port Arthur for his support for the dinner on Tuesday night, and Tom Neal, the Director at the Museum of the Gulf Coast.

For more information about the events, please see the story published by the Bureau of Economic Geology and coverage in the Beaumont Business Journal.

Gulf Coast Carbon Center Blog

Injecting a decade of experience into CCS technology.

Monthly Archives: July 2017

GCCC Summer Interns Apply Skills to CCS

Gulf Coast Carbon Collaboration