College Park, MD 20740
Abstract
Geological carbon sequestration has emerged as a key potential technology pathway for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and stabilizing concentrations. Such a pathway requires 1000s of large volume injection facilities distributed globally with very low percentages of leakage. Although several large-scale projects exist, they do not currently cover a wide enough range of geological conditions to demonstrate that this technology pathway is likely to succeed. Similarly, current measurement, monitoring, and verification technology may not accurately document either injection volumes or leakage risk and activity within the full necessary range of important geological conditions.
To resolve these concerns, many large-volume, high-rate injection projects must proceed rapidly in order to serve two critical goals. The first is to demonstrate successful injection over a range of conditions, thereby testing plays for carbon storage. The second is to develop key science and technology experimentally to expedite the deployment of storage and improve the confidence of leakage monitoring and overall safety. In order for these goals to be met, injection must occur at a large scale due to the intrinsic difficulties of subsurface characterization, the scale of key geological heterogeneities, and the amount of signal necessary for successful monitoring and risk assessment. These facts also highlight the need for detailed and comprehensive geological assessment at any large-volume injection site before injection begins in order to understand local capacity, specific injectivity, potential leakage fast paths, and reservoir heterogeneity and integrity.
About the Speaker
Julio received his B.S and M.S. degrees from M.I.T., followed by a Ph.D. at the Univ. So. California. After graduation, he worked for five years as a senior research scientist in Houston, first at Exxon and later ExxonMobil. Currently a research scientist at the Univ. of Maryland, Julio is affiliated with the Earth Systems Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC) and the Joint Global Change Research Institute (JGCRI) at the Univ. of Maryland, and the Institute for Energy Research at the Univ. of Wyoming. He is the senior science coordinator for the Teapot Dome National Carbon Storage Test Center, and recently appointed to a lead technical position in carbon management for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. His research interests include carbon sequestration, hydrocarbon systems, deep-water depositional systems, paleoclimatology, planetary geology, sequence stratigraphy, and landslide physics. A native of Rhode Island, he has worked in CA, WA, UT, WY, CO, Spain, Ireland, the North Sea, Nigeria, Angola, Venezuela, Azerbaijan, Australia, Antarctica, and Mars.
