TAM SEMINAR SERIES Presents: Ruben JuanesMIT Multiphase Flow in Porous Media: Wetting, Disorder, and Pattern Formation

Thursday, May 2nd, 201911AM - 12PM A230, TECH Building

AbstractThe displacement of one fluid by another in a porous medium gives rise to a rich variety of hydrodynamic instabilities. Beyond their scientific value as fascinating models of pattern formation, unstable porous-media flows are essential to understanding many natural and man-made processes, including water infiltration in the vadose zone, carbon dioxide injection and storage in deep saline aquifers, methane venting from organic-rich sediments, and fracturing from fluid injection. Here, we review a handful of these hydromechanical instabilities, elucidate the key physics at play, and point to modeling frameworks that permit quantitative assessments of their impact at the geologic scale.

BiographyRuben Juanes is Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT, and Director of the Pierce Laboratory for Infrastructure Science and Engineering. Prior to joining the MIT faculty, he was Acting Assistant Professor at Stanford University, and Assistant Professor at UT Austin. He is an expert in multiphase flow through porous media and computational geomechanics, with applications to large-scale Earth science problems in the areas of energy and environment: oil and gas recovery, methane hydrates, and geologic carbon sequestration. He is the author of over 140 peer-reviewed journal publications papers (including over 40 papers on carbon sequestration and EOR) and over 60 conference papers. He is the recipient of the inaugural US Department of Energy Early Career Award and the DOE Geoscience Award. He holds MS and PhD Degrees from the University of California at Berkeley.