Facility for high temperature, high pressure rheology of geomaterials
Lead Research Organisation:
Durham University
Department Name: Earth Sciences
Abstract
The flow of geomaterials through the natural environment is of great societal and economic importance. Understanding the flow of these materials - such as magma, submarine sediments, drilling muds, and fluids associated with carbon capture and storage (CCS) - is essential if we are to forecast volcanic eruptions, protect undersea telecoms infrastructure, and lower the impacts of fossil fuel production and use. The key to understanding and predicting flow behaviour lies in accurate measurements of 'rheology', which describes how a material deforms when a force acts on it. This project will create a facility for measuring the rheology of geomaterials, train academic and industrial researchers from the UK's Earth and environmental sciences community to use it, and act as a forum for knowledge exchange in the field of rheology and flow of geomaterials.
Geomaterials are often complex. For example, magma is made up of three different phases - molten rock, solid crystals, and deformable gas bubbles - and their relative proportions change as the magma rises through the Earth's crust, decompresses, and cools down. It is common for all geomaterials to change their rheology as they experience extreme variations in temperature and pressure as they move through the upper crust, or across the ocean floor. As a result, the rheology of geomaterials is highly complex, requiring specialist equipment to measure it. It is also essential to be able to measure it over a wide range of pressures and temperatures. There is currently no facility available in the UK that can do this.
The new facility is unique because:
1. It can operate over temperatures from -100C to +1600C covering the full range of temperatures found on the Earth's surface, from Antarctic ice-sheets to volcanic lava flows.
2. It can operate at pressures up to 1000 times greater than atmospheric pressure, up to 300C. This covers pressures and temperatures in the deepest oceans, and the deepest boreholes in the Earth's crust.
3. It includes a unique instrument, capable of measuring rheology while replicating the complex changes in flow speed and direction that are common in natural environmental flows. The manufacturer will work with us to validate this functionality and extend it from 600C to 1000C so that we can replicate complex flows of magma.
4. The facility will link in with extensive existing equipment at Durham University that can be used to measure other properties of geomaterials at high temperature, such as the growth or melting of different crystals, changes to the internal structure, and physical properties of drilling muds.
The facility will be used by researchers from across the UK to solve a wide range of problems, such as:
* What controls where lava flows go? This depends on the rheology of lava as it cools and solidifies.
* How can we protect aircraft jet engines from airborne particles? This depends on the mechanical properties of the material produced when the particles weld together in the engine.
* How do we reduce the environmental impact of drilling for extraction of resources or energy? We can engineer effective water-based drilling muds with much lower environmental impact than current oil-based muds. We can also develop effective strategies for pumping captured CO2 into crustal storage reservoirs to reduce its climate impact. Both applications depend on measuring the rheological behaviour of geomaterials at the high pressures and temperatures found in the crust.
The UK has a large, world-leading community of researchers working on environmental flows involving geomaterials. We will promote the facility as a hub for this research by making it available at cost-price to internal and external users, and by running training and knowledge exchange workshops to bring researchers from universities and industry together. We will support users in preparing research projects that use the facility, and keep an open repository of outputs and data.
Geomaterials are often complex. For example, magma is made up of three different phases - molten rock, solid crystals, and deformable gas bubbles - and their relative proportions change as the magma rises through the Earth's crust, decompresses, and cools down. It is common for all geomaterials to change their rheology as they experience extreme variations in temperature and pressure as they move through the upper crust, or across the ocean floor. As a result, the rheology of geomaterials is highly complex, requiring specialist equipment to measure it. It is also essential to be able to measure it over a wide range of pressures and temperatures. There is currently no facility available in the UK that can do this.
The new facility is unique because:
1. It can operate over temperatures from -100C to +1600C covering the full range of temperatures found on the Earth's surface, from Antarctic ice-sheets to volcanic lava flows.
2. It can operate at pressures up to 1000 times greater than atmospheric pressure, up to 300C. This covers pressures and temperatures in the deepest oceans, and the deepest boreholes in the Earth's crust.
3. It includes a unique instrument, capable of measuring rheology while replicating the complex changes in flow speed and direction that are common in natural environmental flows. The manufacturer will work with us to validate this functionality and extend it from 600C to 1000C so that we can replicate complex flows of magma.
4. The facility will link in with extensive existing equipment at Durham University that can be used to measure other properties of geomaterials at high temperature, such as the growth or melting of different crystals, changes to the internal structure, and physical properties of drilling muds.
The facility will be used by researchers from across the UK to solve a wide range of problems, such as:
* What controls where lava flows go? This depends on the rheology of lava as it cools and solidifies.
* How can we protect aircraft jet engines from airborne particles? This depends on the mechanical properties of the material produced when the particles weld together in the engine.
* How do we reduce the environmental impact of drilling for extraction of resources or energy? We can engineer effective water-based drilling muds with much lower environmental impact than current oil-based muds. We can also develop effective strategies for pumping captured CO2 into crustal storage reservoirs to reduce its climate impact. Both applications depend on measuring the rheological behaviour of geomaterials at the high pressures and temperatures found in the crust.
The UK has a large, world-leading community of researchers working on environmental flows involving geomaterials. We will promote the facility as a hub for this research by making it available at cost-price to internal and external users, and by running training and knowledge exchange workshops to bring researchers from universities and industry together. We will support users in preparing research projects that use the facility, and keep an open repository of outputs and data.
Planned Impact
*Impact and tracking
The facility will support impact and innovation in a wide range of NERC disciplines by transforming our capacity to quantify the rheology of geomaterials. It will produce unique new data that will underpin the development of more sophisticated and general rheological models which, in turn, will lead to more accurate modelling of hazardous and economically important environmental flows. It will also support the creation of new research collaborations and networks.
Users will commit to the following code-of-practice:
1. Published outputs will acknowledge the use of the facility and reference NERC support, facilitating output tracking.
2. Datasets will be uploaded to the appropriate NERC Data Centre, or similar open-access repository. A database of outputs (links if non-open-access) and datasets will be maintained on the facility webpage.
3. Users will report outputs and impact after 2 and 5 years.
*Social and economic benefits
Facility use by internal and external groups will produce fundamental rheological models, directly supporting the development of more accurate predictive models for environmental flows. These will be applied in the management of hazardous environmental flows (e.g. of lava or submarine sediments) putting better constraints on their timing, magnitude, and duration. Measurements of the transport properties of multiphase fluids under high pressure and temperature will underpin modelling of CCS injection and storage scenarios, supporting the decarbonisation agenda via affordable and safe CCS.
Economic impacts will be realised through, amongst others, application to drilling and resource extraction, and to geo-particle ingestion by gas turbine aero-engines. Both represent expensive problems in multi-billion pound industries, in which improvements to, respectively, drilling mud properties, and the resilience of engine components to alumina-silicate melts, could yield huge financial savings.
*Actual and potential beneficiaries
The facility will produce new research data and outputs, and new research collaborations and networks. The recently-approved NSF-NERC project "Multi-scale investigation of rheology and emplacement of multi-phase lava" to PI Llewellin provides a concrete example of the anticipated workflow from facility use to impact. This project is built on fundamental research into the rheology of lavas from the 2018 Kilauea eruption using low-temperature analogue materials, and high-temperature magma. The new facility will allow much more sophisticated rheometry, over a much greater range of temperature and pressure conditions, than originally anticipated. Results will feed into numerical models of lava flow emplacement (US academic collaborators) which will be tested against field observations made by monitoring staff at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory who will, in turn, use the model to support hazard management during future eruptions.
Similar impact pathways are anticipated for other applications, such as:
1. The facility will be used to develop water-based drilling muds with precisely engineered rheology. Muds will be characterized according to the industry-standard API-13B protocol; Durham is the only UK University to have the facilities for this. Adoption of these engineered muds by extractive industries will reduce environmental impact of their drilling operations.
2. The facility will be used to melt and weld geo-particles under temperature conditions relevant to the environment in different parts of a gas turbine aero-engine. The evolving rheology of the welding material will be characterized, and used by Project Partner Rolls Royce to support the development of strategies to mitigate the impact of particle ingestion.
3. Measurements of the evolving rheology of fluids involved in CCS (CO2, brine, precipitates) will be fed into models that assess the feasibility of different injection scenarios, supporting effective decarbonisation.
The facility will support impact and innovation in a wide range of NERC disciplines by transforming our capacity to quantify the rheology of geomaterials. It will produce unique new data that will underpin the development of more sophisticated and general rheological models which, in turn, will lead to more accurate modelling of hazardous and economically important environmental flows. It will also support the creation of new research collaborations and networks.
Users will commit to the following code-of-practice:
1. Published outputs will acknowledge the use of the facility and reference NERC support, facilitating output tracking.
2. Datasets will be uploaded to the appropriate NERC Data Centre, or similar open-access repository. A database of outputs (links if non-open-access) and datasets will be maintained on the facility webpage.
3. Users will report outputs and impact after 2 and 5 years.
*Social and economic benefits
Facility use by internal and external groups will produce fundamental rheological models, directly supporting the development of more accurate predictive models for environmental flows. These will be applied in the management of hazardous environmental flows (e.g. of lava or submarine sediments) putting better constraints on their timing, magnitude, and duration. Measurements of the transport properties of multiphase fluids under high pressure and temperature will underpin modelling of CCS injection and storage scenarios, supporting the decarbonisation agenda via affordable and safe CCS.
Economic impacts will be realised through, amongst others, application to drilling and resource extraction, and to geo-particle ingestion by gas turbine aero-engines. Both represent expensive problems in multi-billion pound industries, in which improvements to, respectively, drilling mud properties, and the resilience of engine components to alumina-silicate melts, could yield huge financial savings.
*Actual and potential beneficiaries
The facility will produce new research data and outputs, and new research collaborations and networks. The recently-approved NSF-NERC project "Multi-scale investigation of rheology and emplacement of multi-phase lava" to PI Llewellin provides a concrete example of the anticipated workflow from facility use to impact. This project is built on fundamental research into the rheology of lavas from the 2018 Kilauea eruption using low-temperature analogue materials, and high-temperature magma. The new facility will allow much more sophisticated rheometry, over a much greater range of temperature and pressure conditions, than originally anticipated. Results will feed into numerical models of lava flow emplacement (US academic collaborators) which will be tested against field observations made by monitoring staff at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory who will, in turn, use the model to support hazard management during future eruptions.
Similar impact pathways are anticipated for other applications, such as:
1. The facility will be used to develop water-based drilling muds with precisely engineered rheology. Muds will be characterized according to the industry-standard API-13B protocol; Durham is the only UK University to have the facilities for this. Adoption of these engineered muds by extractive industries will reduce environmental impact of their drilling operations.
2. The facility will be used to melt and weld geo-particles under temperature conditions relevant to the environment in different parts of a gas turbine aero-engine. The evolving rheology of the welding material will be characterized, and used by Project Partner Rolls Royce to support the development of strategies to mitigate the impact of particle ingestion.
3. Measurements of the evolving rheology of fluids involved in CCS (CO2, brine, precipitates) will be fed into models that assess the feasibility of different injection scenarios, supporting effective decarbonisation.
People |
ORCID iD |
| Edward Llewellin (Principal Investigator) |