Center for Mechanistic Control of Water-Hydrocarbon-Rock Interactions in Unconventional and Tight Oil Formations (CMC-UF)

Director

Anthony Kovscek

Lead Institution

Stanford University

Class

2018-2022

Mission

To seek fundamental mechanistic understanding to achieve control over the various non-equilibrium chemical and physical processes occurring in shale that increases hydrocarbon production while decreasing the amount of produced water, contaminants, and the number of wells drilled.

Research Topics

water, carbon capture, carbon sequestration, geophysics/geochemistry, mesoscale science, materials and chemistry by design

Materials Studied

Materials: None

Interfaces: organic/inorganic, organic/organic, inorganic/inorganic, gas/liquid, gas/solid, liquid/solid, solid/solid

Nanostructured Materials: None

Experimental and Theoretical Methods

X-ray diffraction and scattering, X-ray imaging, X-ray spectroscopy, electron microscopy, surface science, molecular dynamics (MD), monte carlo (MC), finite element methods, continuum modeling, mesoscale modeling, multiscale modeling, machine learning, data science