Topic: CUSSP Experiment
Enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) hold great promise as a new and widespread source of clean baseload power. The approach relies on modern drilling technology to create an artificial reservoir at depth in hot, dense rock by inducing a fracture network through which cold water can be injected and hot water returned to the surface. Maintaining heat production from EGS reservoirs for years would benefit from improvements in 1) simulations that accurately reflect how fluid pressures, stress, and mineral dissolution/precipitation reactions in hot stressed rock combine to alter flow pathways over time, and 2) new geophysical sensing tools that can remotely detect those changes in real-time.
This talk will highlight how a multidisciplinary team is tackling this need through the Center for Understanding Subsurface Signals and Permeability (CUSSP), supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. CUSSP integrates a highly instrumented field-scale EGS testbed at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) with core-to-microscale laboratory experiments designed to inform multi-continuum reactive flow simulations. The central objective is to demonstrate the ability to connect real-time multi-physics sensing signals to the underlying thermal-hydrological-mechanical-chemical (THMC) processes affecting the properties of the fracture network. We will summarize some of the key fundamental challenges at this frontier where chemistry, rock mechanics, and sensing technologies intersect, and our research approach to make meaningful progress.
Speaker: Dr. Kevin M. Rosso
Dr. Kevin Rosso is a senior geochemist at PNNL. He leads the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Basic Energy Sciences geochemistry program at PNNL, and is the Director of the Center for Understanding Subsurface Signals and Permeability, a multi-institution program funded by DOE’s Office of Science. Dr. Rosso is a well-recognized expert in uncovering mechanisms controlling reaction kinetics at mineral/fluid interfaces, such as for dissolution/precipitation, metal adsorption or incorporation, and redox processes. His current focus is on addressing key basic science questions needed advance enhanced geothermal systems. Previous application spaces include metal sulfide oxidation, bacterial reduction of metal oxides, contaminant fate and transport, crystal growth and dissolution, geologic carbon sequestration, electrical energy storage, and stress corrosion cracking. Dr. Rosso won the Mineralogical Society of America Award in 2004, the Hallimond Lectureship from the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland in 2016, and the Stumm Medal from the European Association of Geochemistry in 2020. He is a Fellow of the Geochemical Society, the European Association of Geochemistry, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Geophysical Union. He has been an active mentor for more than 50 post-doctoral researchers, graduate students, and early career scientists at PNNL and abroad.
