It really has been a remarkable quarter here as we close in on the 5th Annual Symposium taking place in Edmonton on November 13, 14, and 15, 2018. Exciting things are happening both at home and abroad - in addition to seeing members of [RG]2 making innovative presentations and attending events on both sides of the Atlantic and the Pacific, we've attracted some visitors from Down Under and forged new and important global relationships in CCUS.
RESEARCH UPDATES
Registration for the 5th Annual [RG]2 Symposium is now open. The itinerary is still being finalized but you are welcome to register now at this link. [RG]2 has some amazing presentations and updates in store for this year as we look towards the end of this IRC program. Plans are already underway for moving forward with a second IRC application that is tailored to meet industry needs responsibly while continuing to provide the [RG]2 team with relevant, unique, and challenging research opportunities.
[RG]2 was pleased to be a part of the 2nd workshop of the Knowledge Network in Reservoir Geomechanics for Mature Fields – IMP - UAlberta – PEMEX. It was a successful meeting of the minds that will guide the next steps in our research.
Instituto Nacional de Electricidad y Energía (INEEL) announced the creation of the Mexican CCUS Centre. [RG]2 will be working on the CO2 storage theme of this center. Feel free to watch the entire presentation on YouTube. If you would like the Spanish version of the slides that summarize the structure of the CEM CCUS centre, please email hwalls@ualberta.ca.
Within the next 6 weeks we will see approximately 10 of our students move through their PhD candidacy exams and get one step closer to their degrees. We wish them all luck in their upcoming preparations and look forward to passing out a round of congratulations in the next quarterly!
PRESENTATIONS, PUBLICATIONS, POSTERS, & PRIZES
PhD Candidate Amir Haghi presented his paper New Experimental Approach for Stress-Dependent Capillary Pressure and Relative Permeability Curves in Porous Media at the 4th UK Interpore Conference at the University of Aberdeen in Aberdeen, Scotland.
Dr. Chalaturnyk was pleased to be an Invited Speaker at the recently held Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage Forum held at the China University of Petroleum, Beijing from September 17-18 2018. Prior to the Forum, Dr. Chalaturnyk provided a one hour seminar to graduate students on Sunday, September 16th and delivered his invited talk entitled “ Aquistore - Advancing Canadian Expertise in the Geological Storage of CO2” on Monday September 17th. His visit to Beijing also provided an opportunity to renew discussions with the China Geological Survey on cooperative projects related to CCUS as well as hold a reservoir geomechanics research program review meeting with Dr. Dingwei Weng and his colleagues from PetroChina RIPED, one of our industrial sponsors in the ES IRC in Reservoir Geomechanics Consortia. This was a very valuable meeting and we look forward to welcoming four colleagues from RIPED at our Annual Research Symposium held Nov. 13-15, 2018 at the University of Alberta.
Following a successful presentation at the Interpore 10th Annual Meeting in New Orleans, 2018, [RG]2 alumnus Bauyrzhan Primkulov and other researchers from UofA, MIT, and Oxford University published a full paper on “Quasistatic fluid-fluid displacement in porous media: Invasion-percolation through a wetting transition” in the Journal of Physical Review – Fluids. Bauyrzhan K. Primkulov, Stephen Talman, Keivan Khaleghi, Alireza Rangriz Shokri, Rick Chalaturnyk, Benzhong Zhao, Christopher W. MacMinn, and Ruben Juanes.
On the occasion of the 5th North American Energy Ministers Trilateral Meeting (Canada, Mexico, and US) on Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage, Alireza RangrizShokri presented an Innovation Overview of Canadian CO2 Storage and EOR Activities, and Collaboration Opportunities for CO2 Storage and EOR in Canada.
After discussing “Advances in Thermal Reservoir-Geomechanical Coupled Simulations at Aquistore” at Aquistore’s Annual General Meeting in Regina, Dr. Alireza RangrizSShokri and Dr. Rick joined the celebration for the 20th anniversary of the Petroleum Technology Research Center (PTRC).
ARRIVALS & DEPARTURES
[RG]2 welcomes coop students Guan Chen and Olexandr Troshyn. Olexandr will be working primarily in GeoREF assisting the team with setting up experiments, managing and organizing equipment schedules, and processing data. Guan will be working in GeoCERF and GeoPrint to move several tests towards completion as well as performing maintenance on the MFlex Printer System.
PhD Candidate Matthew Tsang is joining us from the University of Queensland, Australia - School of Engineering for a month working on the application of Synthetic Rock Mass numerical models to estimate rock mass strength for coal mine slope stability. In addition to his own PhD work, Matthew has jumped in with both feet to a number of site visit and networking opportunities. He is looking forward to attending the Energi Simulation Summit in Calgary on October 2 and 3, 2018.
A bittersweet congratulations to Sebastian Gomez who has left [RG]2 to accept a position with the Halliburton Directional Drilling team. While we are sad to lose him, we sincerely wish Sebastian all the best in his new endeavour and look forward to seeing where the future takes him.
NOTEWORTHY
According to the website, "Falling Walls Lab is a fast paced format—a little TEDtalk, a little Dragon’s Den, designed to showcase the quality, talent and passion of Next Gen researchers and innovators. Participants present their idea in 3 minutes to a panel of representatives from academia, government, business and the media." [RG]2 Postdoctoral Fellow Kevin Hodder was a finalist with his presentation on Breaking the Wall of Improvised Explosive Device Protection through 3D Printing with Sand. Congratulations, Dr. Hodder!
For the second time in a row, Dr. Alireza RangrizShokri has been selected by the SPE Journal Associate Editors to receive the 2018 Technical Editor Award for outstanding service, an international recognition for excellence as a Technical Editor of SPE’s peer-reviewed journals. Congratulations again, Dr. RangrizShokri!
Copyright 2018 [RG]2. Every attempt has been made to ensure accuracy of the information published herein and any errors or omissions are entirely unintentional. Please report discrepancies or corrections to hwalls@ualberta.ca