PETROENG 7065 - Transport and Properties of Porous Media

North Terrace Campus - Semester 2 - 2020

The course will cover all aspects of flow and properties of porous media, natural porous reservoirs and artificial porous materials. These are presented in the context of chemical, environmental, civil, agricultural, petroleum, geological, medical and mechanical engineering. The topics list includes but is not limited to contamination of aquifers, industrial waste disposal, propagation of viruses and bacteria in subterranean waters, reactive flows, catalytic chemical reactors, nano-technologies in porous media, chromatography, primary and secondary migration of hydrocarbons and formation of ancient petroleum accumulations, petroleum exploration strategy, production of oil and gas from conventional (porous) and unconventional (shales, coals) reservoirs, productivity of artesian and petroleum wells, blood circulation in tissues, cholesterol propagation, vein plugging and brain stroke, transport of pharmaceutical and other aerosolized masses in catalytic porous materials, drag delivery, drilling fluid invasion and logging data, salinity variation during plant irrigation, clays and ion exchange in aquifers, fines migration and salinity distribution in geologic formations. The research methods cover laboratory flows in natural and artificial cores, basic governing equations with thermodynamics and rheology, upscaling and averaging, exact and asymptotic solutions of non-linear equations, and micro-scale measurements. In general, the course covers flow and deformation phenomena in natural and industrial porous systems with numerous applications in various areas of chemical, environmental, petroleum, mining, medical and mechanical engineering. The course includes a project, where each participant presents a mathematical model of his/her area of research, present an exact or asymptotic solution, its Matlab implementation, treatment of small-scale laboratory data and large-scale field forecast.

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