October 6, 2015 - Harvesting oil, mitigating subsurface contamination, and sequestering carbon emissions share a common thread—they deal with multiphase flows, or situations where materials are flowing close together in different states (solids, liquids, or gases) or when the flow is comprised of materials that have a common state with a different chemical makeup that prevents mixing (oil and water). A research team led by Virginia Tech’s James McClure is using computational resources at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility to improve computational models for subsurface multiphase flow calculations. The team can essentially take 3-D micro-CT imagery of geologic systems and put them in motion. Thus far, the team has been able to gain unprecedented insight into the intersection of disparate phases, such as oil and water, move and interact in porous rock below the Earth’s surface.
Topic: