A journey from investigating anisotropic transport evolution in a rough fracture undergoing shear to predicting injection-induced seismicity
In this Chin-Fu Tsang Coupled Processes Award Lecture, I will give an overview of my scientific career. I will start explaining my research during my MSc thesis at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), in which we studied the transport properties evolution in a rough fracture when subjected to shear slip. We found that both fracture transmissivity and transport evolve anisotropically, with a higher enhancement in the direction perpendicular to shear. A detailed understanding this coupled hydro-mechanical observation is important because while we are interested in minimizing permeability increase in some applications, like nuclear waste disposal, we seek to maximize permeability enhancement in others, like enhanced geothermal systems. Then, I will synthesize my research on geologic carbon storage, which I started during my PhD and continued during my postdocs and as a tenured scientist. The main conclusion is that properly characterized, monitored and managed storage sites can lead to a low risk of inducing felt induced seismicity because of the generally non-critically stressed nature of sedimentary rock where CO2 is planned to be stored. Next, I will change topic again and briefly explain our advances in the process understanding of post-injection induced seismicity occurring after the stimulation of enhanced geothermal systems. By superposing the poromechanical, thermo-mechanical and shear slip stress transfer, we find that certain fracture orientations are stabilized during injection because of an undrained response of the tight rock during injection, but as this stabilizing effect vanishes after shut-in, fracture reactivation may occur. Finally, I will explain our recent research on superhot geothermal systems where water stays in supercritical conditions and I will give an overview of our current research in the attempt to forecast injection-induced seismicity within the ERC project GEoREST (https://www.georest.eu/).
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Format: | comunicación de congreso biblioteca |
Language: | English |
Published: |
2020-10-11
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Subjects: | Injection seismicity, Induced seismicity, |
Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10261/224396 |
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Summary: | In this Chin-Fu Tsang Coupled Processes Award Lecture, I will give an overview of my scientific career. I will start explaining my research during my MSc thesis at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), in which we studied the transport properties evolution in a rough fracture when subjected to shear slip. We found that both fracture transmissivity and transport evolve anisotropically, with a higher enhancement in the direction perpendicular to shear. A detailed understanding this coupled hydro-mechanical observation is important because while we are interested in minimizing permeability increase in some applications, like nuclear waste disposal, we seek to maximize permeability enhancement in others, like enhanced geothermal systems. Then, I will synthesize my research on geologic carbon storage, which I started during my PhD and continued during my postdocs and as a tenured scientist. The main conclusion is that properly characterized, monitored and managed storage sites can lead to a low risk of inducing felt induced seismicity because of the generally non-critically stressed nature of sedimentary rock where CO2 is planned to be stored. Next, I will change topic again and briefly explain our advances in the process understanding of post-injection induced seismicity occurring after the stimulation of enhanced geothermal systems. By superposing the poromechanical, thermo-mechanical and shear slip stress transfer, we find that certain fracture orientations are stabilized during injection because of an undrained response of the tight rock during injection, but as this stabilizing effect vanishes after shut-in, fracture reactivation may occur. Finally, I will explain our recent research on superhot geothermal systems where water stays in supercritical conditions and I will give an overview of our current research in the attempt to forecast injection-induced seismicity within the ERC project GEoREST (https://www.georest.eu/). |
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