Research Associate at Imperial College London

Location: South Kensington, London 

Job Summary

Applications are invited for a Research Associate to investigate pore-to-core characterisation and digital rock modelling to improve the numerical modelling of the flow carbon dioxide flow through saline aquifers for carbon storage underground. The aim is to demonstrate the impact of upscaling CO₂ flow in reservoirs, accounting for small scale heterogeneities, on case study storage sites of relevance to Shell. These tools will to be used by engineers to estimate the volume and security of CO₂ trapped during geological sequestration to mitigate climate change. You will be working on actual CO2 storage projects and a significant focus of this work is deployment. This represents a unique opportunity for high impact research that is also being directly used by industry.

The research will be carried out under the Shell funded Digital Rocks Phase 2 project and will be a part of £12M EPSRC Prosperity Partnership programme “InFUSE”. You will join a highly collaborative and multidisciplinary team, which includes PhD students and postdocs associated with this new project as well as three existing Shell-Imperial College London programmes: the Digital Rock Programme, the University Technology Centre for Fuels and Lubricants, and the Centre for Advanced Interfacial Materials Science (including Energy Storage).

Duties and responsibilities 

Research Duties:

• Evaluate numerical modelling techniques suitable for characterising multiphase flow heterogeneity in rocks from core flood experiments
• Implement and test upscaling techniques in commercial reservoir simulation including OpenGoSim-PFlotran and CMG
• Evaluate the impact of heterogeneities on field scale deployment of CO₂ storage at case study sites
• Participate in annual meetings with project partners, including Shell and the wider InFuse programme

Other Duties:

• To undertake appropriate administration tasks
• To attend relevant meetings
• To undertake and necessary training and/or development

Essential requirements 

You should have completed or about to obtain a PhD, or equivalent, in the modelling and analysis of porous media flow or in a related field. You should also be able to write computer programs and ideally have a background in fluid dynamics as well as expertise in using commercial simulation tools for the numerical modelling of porous media flows.

It would be expected that you would have a track record of publishing papers and giving presentations at international conferences.

Further Information

This is a full time, fixed term position for up to 12 months and based at South Kensington Campus.

Candidates who have not yet been officially awarded their PhD will be appointed as a Research Assistant within the salary range £40,694 – £43,888 per annum.

Informal inquiries about the position can be made to Dr Samuel Krevor s.krevor@imperial.ac.uk.

Closing date: 7th April 2024.

Apply online via the above ‘Apply’ button.