Consortium

The Rice University Consortium for Hydrogen & Carbon Geostorage, under the direction of Prof. Philip Singer and the co-direction of Prof. Walter Chapman & Prof. George Hirasaki, is a group of Rice University faculty, staff and students engaged in collaborative research with industry partners and various academic researchers.

As the transition towards renewable energy sources intensifies, hydrogen is emerging as a promising energy carrier. One crucial yet challenging component of a hydrogen economy is the long-term storage of hydrogen, whether it is green hydrogen (i.e., hydrogen produced renewable energy sources) or blue hydrogen (i.e., hydrogen produced from steam methane reforming and carbon dioxide geostorage). To this end, partially depleted unconventional gas shale reservoirs show great promise for their vast existing geostorage capacity, their access to pipelines & other infrastructure, and their proximity to renewable energy sources, all in one centralized location.

The mission, objectives, and resources of our new Consortium are as follows:

Mission

Provide a platform for members to collaborate on technical aspects of hydrogen geostorage & carbon utilization/geostorage in unconventional shale reservoirs, and other reservoir types

Provide a platform for members to contribute core samples for advanced NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) measurements, MD (molecular dynamics) simulations, and thermodynamics with mDFT (molecular density functional theory)

Provide an open environment for sharing the NMR, MD, and mDFT data with consortium members for reservoir modeling predictions

Provide an open forum to plan pilot programs in the field

Objectives

Investigate the physical, chemical, and transport processes for hydrogen geostorage & carbon utilization/geostorage in unconventional shale reservoirs, and other reservoir types

Probe from the molecular-scale (i.e., Å) to the core-scale (i.e., cm) using advanced NMR measurements, MD simulations, and thermodynamics with mDFT

Determine storage mechanisms and storage volumes of hydrogen, methane, and carbon dioxide in fractures, inorganic pores, organic pores, and dissolved in kerogen

Determine production rate mechanisms and concentration of hydrogen, methane, and carbon dioxide for various production cycles

Determine changes of rock properties during multiple injection and depletion cycles

Determine optimal economic rates by numerically modelling various depletion strategies

Determine how the geostorage properties of each basin vary with organic maturation by artificially maturing core samples

Use the data as input in reservoir simulators for upscaling to the reservoir (i.e., km) scale

Resources

Advanced NMR facilities for measuring ¹H relaxation at both 20 MHz and 2 MHz (plus diffusion at 2 MHz) on core samples saturated with hydrogen, methane, and carbon dioxide at pressures up to 5000 psi, at ambient temperature

²H and ¹³C NMR will become available for use with isotopically-enriched gases

Access to cores from the Eagle Ford and Permian basins in West Texas, as well as cores from other gas shale basins at varying levels of organic maturity

Unique access to high performance computing at Oak Ridge National Laboratory for MD simulations and mDFT computations

Unique combination of expertise in petrophysics, geology, geochemistry, computational chemistry and thermodynamics

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