Energy-Geosystems Group

Welcome to our website!

 

We are the Energy-Geosystems Research Laboratory (EGRL) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL). We are dedicated to finding a solution for the higher-than-ever energy demand, environmental sustainability, biomedical engineering, and the resiliency of old-and-new infrastructures. Example of research applications include:

 

• Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS). Ex: geologic CO2 storage, CO2-treatment of recycled concrete aggregates (RCA)

• Geo-Energy Storage (Large- and small-scale; e.g., Porous Media Compressed Air Energy Storage (PM-CAES), Pipe-pile-based microscale CAES, Underground hydrogen storage (UHS))

• Disposal of Energy-byproducts (e.g., spent nuclear fuels (SNF))

• Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS)

• Enhanced Oil Recovery; CO2-CH4 Replacement

• Gas-Hydrate Bearing Sediments

• Resilient Rural Infrastructures/ Resilient Transportation-Geotechnical systems

• Convection-Enhanced Drug Delivery (CED) to the Human Brain/Tissues

 

To better understand and thus improve the above operations, we investigate hydro-chemo-thermo-mechanically coupled phenomena in-depth, for example: single-phase reactive fluid transport in porous media, multi-phase fluid flow in disordered-deformable porous media, repetitive fluid injection-withdrawal in the reservoir, ensuing poro- and thermo-elastic stress changes, and geotechnical implications that may arise during these operations. We use both numerical simulations and novel experimental techniques to explore such multi-physically coupled processes.