[FISH] Maartje Boon (University of Stuttgart)

“Experimental characterization of gas/brine multiphase flow in porous rock across scales”

Abstract: Geological carbon sequestration and underground hydrogen storage in porous reservoirs are promising strategies for a sustainable energy future. To safely and efficiently utilize porous reservoirs for underground gas storage, it is essential to characterize multiphase flow and transport in heterogeneous porous rock at multiple scales.

In this talk, I will present results from core-flooding and microfluidic experiments where we visualized and characterized multiphase flow for gas/brine systems in heterogeneous rocks at the pore- and core-scale, as well as in 2D porous glass microfluidic chips. Alongside drainage and imbibition, the experiments included no-flow periods to investigate the redistribution of gas in the pore space during periods of gas storage.

Surprisingly, despite extensive pre-equilibration, the experiments revealed that gas dissolution/exsolution in brine significantly impacts the observed flow and trapping behavior, particularly in heterogeneous systems. During periods of flow, a complex interplay of viscous, capillary, and gravitational forces—combined with gas dissolution into brine—resulted in preferential flow paths in the rock that can lead to significant gas trapping. During no-flow periods, disconnected gas ganglia were reconnected through the dissolution-driven process of Ostwald ripening. This phenomenon can reduce trapped gas saturation in the porous reservoir, which is advantageous for underground hydrogen storage but undesirable for geological carbon sequestration.

About the Speaker: Maartje Boon is a Junior Professor at the Institute of Applied Mechanics at the University of Stuttgart, working on porous media science. She holds an MSc in Hydrogeology from Utrecht University and earned her PhD in Petroleum Engineering from Imperial College London, focused on reactive transport with applications for geological carbon sequestration. From 2017 to 2021, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at Stanford University’s Energy Resources Engineering department, studying the impact of rock-structure heterogeneity on multiphase flow properties and its implications for geological carbon sequestration. From 2021-2023, she joined the Geoscience Engineering department at TU Delft as a postdoctoral researcher, where she worked on underground hydrogen storage in porous reservoirs, characterizing hydrogen transport from the pore- to the field-scale.

Friday Informal Seminar Hour —

Postdoc-run seminar series within the Earth Resources Laboratory (ERL). Features talks by ERL members as well as special guests from academia and the energy industry on topics including seismology, geothermal energy, carbon sequestration, machine learning for geophysics, multiphase flow, subsurface imaging, and uncertainty quantification.

Contact: fish_seminar_organizers@mit.edu