Wednesday, June 8, 2005

Shale Tale(mp3 file)

Ray Levey from the University of Utah talks about the science behind converting shale and tar sands to refined fuel.

Research centers and institutes are an important facet of a modern research university. Typically, they involve a combination of regular and research faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, post docs and professional staff who are dedicated to advancing some field of knowledge, or addressing a vital scientific question, using a multi-disciplinary approach. For example, how will global fuel consumption needs be met for the next century? Today's complex scientific and technological problems are often too broad to be solved by a single researcher working in isolation. Institutes and centers facilitate collaboration among multiple researchers from a host of disciplines, and provide students with the first exposure to a dynamic environment that more closely resembles today's high tech corporate reality.

During much of the last century, engineering and applied scientific research was synonymous with large, well-respected corporate laboratories - Bell Labs, GE, Dow, DuPont and Exxon. In addition to fostering innovation and contributing to the body of scientific knowledge, corporate laboratories absorbed class after class of engineering graduates for virtually lifetime employment. This model was replicated in chemical and fuels production, aerospace, communications, pharmaceutics, medical device and countless other industries. In addition, federally operated think-tanks such as those at Livermore and Los Alamos recruited scientists and engineers to focus on highly classified national security issues.

In the '70's and 80's, corporate downsizing and cutbacks in defense spending irrevocably altered the research landscape. In an effort to trim costs, companies dismantled large internal research operations preferring to outsource all but those specific projects deemed most essential for bottom line performance. Further, they dramatically shortened the time horizon for internal research projects and insisted that any remaining internal research be closely tied to existing corporate problems. The need for fundamental research had not diminished, but corporations became increasingly reluctant to risk scarce resources on important but tangential problems.

Within this setting, research universities with their institutes and centers developed a crucial new role in preserving the nation's technological and scientific primacy. The following quote by James Duderstadt, former president of the University of Michigan clearly articulates this vision. "Certainly, as a primary source of basic research and the next generation of scholars and professionals, the research university will remain an asset of great value. At a time when both industry and government are shifting more toward applied research and development, the research university has become ever more important as an intellectual force in our society."

According to Duderstadt the research university of the future will be a magnet for intellectual, scientific and financial capital. "Many research universities are already evolving into so-called core-in-cloud organizations, in which academic departments or schools conducting elite education and basic research, are surrounded by a constellation of peri-university organizations, research institutes, think tanks, corporate R&D centers that draw intellectual strength from the core university and provide important financial, human and physical resources in return. Such a structure reflects the blurring of basic and applied research, education and training, the university and broader society." The University of Utah's Research Park is an often-cited example of one of the most successful versions of this concept.

The following article presents an in-depth look at one research institute, the Earth and Geoscience Institute (EGI) located at the University of Utah. Housed within the College of Engineering, EGI provides University of Utah students from across campus with their first real world experience in the broader scientific community. Working on specific government or industry directed projects, students participate in data collection and analysis for interpretation and documentation of results. Since it was established in 1995, EGI's links to campus have expanded continuously with new scientific collaborations between regular faculty and EGI researchers. This combination strengthens the University's ability to attract research funding and adds diversity to the educational experience. Many EGI researchers have adjunct faculty appointments, serve on graduate committees and teach classes in their field of expertise.

EGI is only one of many research centers and institutes in colleges throughout the University.

In 1900 the world energy yearly consumption was about 75 million barrels of oil. Today, in 2000, mankind consumes about 75 million barrels of oil per day. Energy for transportation, industrial use, and social development of the world is without parallel in linking science and mankind in the 20th century. Energy for the development of our society is fundamental and fossil fuels supply over 75% of the world's energy needs.

Technology and solutions for meeting the global energy demand require scientists to develop new ideas or techniques that can be transferred from theory to practice. The University of Utah Energy & Geoscience Institute provides a valuable link by providing hands-on, real world experience for scientists. Many students from departments as diverse as Computer Science, Chemical & Fuels Engineering, Geology & Geophysics, Geography, and Chemistry experience their first contact with corporate or government through research projects performed at EGI.

EGI is a not-for-profit research organization with a 25-year record of conducting multidisciplinary projects worldwide. EGI was created in 1995 by the merger of two internationally recognized institutes; the University of Utah Research Institute (UURI), and the group conducting fossil energy research from the Earth Sciences Resources Institute (ESRI) located at the University of South Carolina. The merger of these two organizations has brought the University of Utah into the forefront of combined geoscience and engineering programs. Although administered by the Vice President for Research, Dr. Richard Koehn, the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, chaired by Lawrence Reaveley, provides EGI an academic link to the main campus.

The Institute is located in University Research Park and accommodates more than 60 scientists and support staff. The range of scientific expertise includes engineers, geologists, geophysicists, computer scientists, and chemists. In addition to the main facility Salt Lake City, EGI maintains offices in Houston and Calgary, which are the respective centers of international and North American energy activity.

International Scope

Through cooperative agreements with universities and research institutes, government agencies and laboratories, and national energy companies worldwide, the Institute undertakes a broad range of projects on all seven continents. Over 30 energy companies worldwide are part of the EGI Corporate Associates Program, while funding from the Department of Energy Fossil Energy and Geothermal programs, the Gas Research Institute and major corporations add to the diversity of funding.

EGI scientists collaborate with scientists around the globe including: Azerbaijan (Institute of Geology and Academy of Science), Brazil (Universidade Federal Fluminense-UFF), Columbia, Peoples Republic of China (China University of Geosciences), India (Keshava Deva Malaviya Institute of Petroleum Exploration-ONGC), Republic of Georgia (Georgian Academy of Sciences), Republic of Kazakhstan, Republic of Slovakia, Russian Federation. United Kingdom (Imperial College and British Geologic Survey-BGS), Greenland and Denmark (Surveys).

EGI's petroleum projects range in scope from basin analysis and petroleum systems, to field evaluations and reservoir characterization, and encompass petroleum basins of the former Soviet Union, North Africa and the Middle East, Central and South America, Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, Australia, China, Southeast Asia, and the Far East.

An alliance between EGI and the University's Center for Scientific Computing and Imaging directed by Dr. Chris Johnson gives the Institute a unique capability for advanced reservoir visualization and computational steering for geoscience applications. The University of Utah's Visual Supercomputing Center contains one of the most powerful graphics systems, featuring eight SGI InfiniteReality™ visualization pipelines and 64 processors.

EGI's has a Geochemistry and Environmental Chemistry Laboratories with the Environmental Laboratory dedicated to the analysis of trace organic compounds (i.e., less than 1 part per million) and a Geochemical Laboraory dedicated to the analysis of bulk samples. The EGI labs collaborate with the Stable Isotope Ratio Facility For Environmental Research (SIRFER) at the University of Utah allowing the measurement hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, and oxygen isotope ratios in organic and inorganic samples.

In 1999 BP Amoco corporation awarded EGI a worldwide database appraised at $11.3 million. This unique global database of all fossil information and tools for gathering and storing data are the product of nearly 40 years of BP Amoco research and exploration worldwide. This database, covering more than 100 basins worldwide, will greatly diversity EGI's research to include paleoclimatic and paleoceanograpic studies. Such information will help broaden our understanding of global temperature fluctuations through time as defined by changes in the world's biota-important in view of the current public dialogue on issues like global climate change.

EGI is also the home of the DOSECC, Drilling, Observation and Sampling of Earth's Continental Crust which is a consortia of 44 universities, three national laboratories and one state geological survey. DOSECC was organized in 1984 to assist Principal Investigators in the implementation of Continental Scientific Drilling (CSD) projects, by linking earth science with drilling technology through projects funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation. EGI is also the National Science Foundation's Center of Excellence (1999-2001) for Gravity & Magnetics Research.

Geothermal Research

EGI's geothermal research is focused on developing new technology for exploration, reservoir delineation, and production of resources in the Western United States, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. In past decades, there was concern that fossil fuels were being depleted quickly and would soon run out. Today, however, the primary concern over using fossil fuels is environmental degradation. With increasing agreement among climate scientists that humanity's activities, primarily agriculture and energy use, are increasing the quantity of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, potentially affecting the global climate, the worldwide search for clean energy sources is intensifying. Geothermal energy, natural heat from the earth, is one source among several of the so-called "renewables" that has potential to replace burning of fossil fuels and thereby decrease the emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

In order to extract heat from subsurface rocks and transport it to the surface for use, a mobile heat-transfer mechanism is needed. Fortunately, Mother Nature furnishes ubiquitous, naturally occurring ground water. Water is an ideal heat-transfer mechanism because of its high specific heat and high heat of vaporization. Hot, recently molten rocks below a geothermal reservoir heat ground water and set it into convective motion.

The geothermally heated water rises buoyantly through interconnected faults, fractures, and pores in the rocks. Open spaces in this plumbing system may constitute only 2% to 5% of the rock volume, but when filled with steam or hot water, they form a subsurface geothermal reservoir.

For generating electricity or such direct-heat uses as heating buildings or greenhouses, large volumes of thermal fluid must be brought to the surface through production wells which are drilled into the upwelling plume of the subsurface hydrothermal convection system. The fluids are generally under high pressure since they arrive at the surface from depths of 0.5 to 4 km and have temperatures in the range 80 to 350 oC. Higher temperature geothermal fluids typically contain 10,000 to 50,000 ppm total dissolved solids and 1 to 5 wt% dissolved gases, and can pose corrosion and scaling problems in surface equipment. Spent fluids exiting the power plant or direct-use heat exchangers are usually injected back into the subsurface at a location peripheral to the reservoir, where they can recharge the reservoir but not short circuit with producing wells.

Although high-grade (high temperature and/or shallow) geothermal resources can be economically used today for power generation and such direct uses as district heating, crop drying, greenhouse heating, refrigeration, fish farming, the vast majority of the world's geothermal resource can not be used economically. Exploration and drilling technologies have been adapted from the petroleum and minerals industries, and power plant technologies have been adapted from the higher temperature fossil and nuclear industries. The fit is not optimum.

EGI scientists and engineers have been assisting the DOE and the U.S. industry by developing better ways to locate geothermal resources in the subsurface and site wells to intersect the reservoir's plumbing system. Other elements of DOE's program, carried out primarily by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO and the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory in Idaho Falls, ID, are meant to improve the energy-conversion technology. New and improved technology in both areas are needed to make geothermal energy economically competitive with other energy sources on a broad scale.

EGI's current research and engineering work under the federal geothermal program includes the following projects:

Tracer Research

Tracing the paths of fluids in the subsurface between injection wells and production wells is important in optimizing reservoir utilization and preventing injected waters from reaching production wells without first being reheated. EGI has been developing chemical tracers that are thermally and chemically stable in the hot, reactive subsurface geothermal environment, that can be detected after dilution along the flow path by factors of 106 to 1010. Part of this work is being done jointly with the Department of Chemistry.

Conceptual Models of Hydrothermal Reservoirs

Selection of exploration techniques and siting of successful exploration, production, or injection wells requires the best possible understanding of the subsurface, especially of the controls on rock permeability. Although each geothermal reservoir is unique, certain general types can be defined. For example, in the Basin and Range province of Utah and Nevada, range-front fault zones and associated faulting and fracturing typically control the subsurface permeability distribution.

EGI is developing and improving conceptual models of hydrothermal systems in sedimentary, igneous and volcanic rocks. We are working on subsurface data and drill core samples from locations around the world, including most recently Indonesia, the Philippines and Guatemala, as well as the United States.

Remote Sensing and GIS

EGI scientists are applying the latest remote sensing data and interpretation techniques to geothermal problems. In one recent study in Nevada, changes in vegetation, detected by interpretation of hyperspectral remote sensing data collected with an airborne AVIRIS system, were correlated with development of a shallow steam zone a mile north of the known producing hyrothermal reservoir. The field operator is now studying the feasibility of producing steam from this zone to supplement the current flow to the existing 60 megawatt power plant.

EGI's geothermal energy research team has been a vital component of the U.S. Department of Energy's geothermal research program since early 1977. EGI is now in the negotiation process for four new three-year awards that will bring about $1.2 million per year to the University of Utah, in order to continue this vital research into the new millennium that is important to the State of Utah and education of the next generation of scientists.

International Advisory Board

The Institute has a highly supportive Advisory Board composed of senior executives in the international energy and minerals industry and from the University of Utah. The current Chairman of the EGI Advisory Board is David Work, Regional President of BP Amoco in Houston. A native of Utah Work resided in Salt Lake City, before entering the energy industry. This executive level Institute Advisory Board devotes time to come to the University of Utah for Bi-annual meetings. These meetings allow the University of Utah's College of Engineering to showcase the research and technology transfer conduced by the Institute. These sessions also provide a unique and valuable dialogue among the industry leaders that keep the Institute at the forefront of worldwide energy issues and establish the University of Utah as one of the leading institutions addressing the global demands for energy.

About the Author

Raymond Levey, Research Professor is Director of the Energy & Geoscience Institute. He received a B.S. in Geology from College at Fredonia part of the State University of New York in 1974, an M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 1978 and 1981. He was appointed as the Energy & Geoscience Institute's second Director in 1999. Dr. Levey came to the University of Utah in 1997 from the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas at Austin where he was the Associate Director. Before joining UT he held various positions in three subsidiaries of Shell Oil Corporation both in research and operations. Levey also worked for the United States Geological Survey and Union Pacific Resources Corporation. He is member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG), Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG), and Geological Society of America (GSA). He is a member of AAPG Research Committee.

rlevey@egi.utah.edu