IIT Roorkee sets up ‘Rock and Fluid Multi-Physics Laboratory’

NEW DELHI : The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee has established a state-of-the-art laboratory named ‘Rock and Fluid Multiphysics Laboratory’. This lab hosts some of the cutting-edge tools and technologies in the domain of applied geoscience and petroleum engineering.

It can facilitate multiphysics and multiscale experiments and create feasibility models for increasing the success rates of the exploration and development targets of energy companies in their efforts to successfully exploit conventional and unconventional energy resources.

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The lab has a low-frequency system (figure 2) that provides dynamic estimates of the seismic rock property response in the range of 0.1 Hz to 3000 Hz, under insitu conditions. This simulates the insitu reservoir under hydrostatic assumptions. The Pseudo Triaxial Setup provides the static (0 Hz) estimates of the elastic and the associated geo-mechanical attributes in the formations of mineral deposits under more realistic subsurface conditions.

Besides these seismic domain investigations, the lab can also make an observation in the resistivity domains using economic and non-destructive techniques like spectral induced polarization (SIP) measurements and the cation exchange capacity (CEC) measurements. This multiphysics approach to understanding the physical processes of rock and fluid and their interactions in the lab helps a lot in upscaling the observations to understand the field measurements.

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This lab can handle characterization challenges of the oil and gas reservoir in routine (more homogeneous and good permeability) and complex (very heterogeneous and poor permeability) formations including the hydrates and the geothermal systems. The lab can also carry out carbon utilization and storage feasibility studies for formations such as shales, organic-rich resources, carbonates, coals, saline aquifers, coals, and volcanic rocks.

Professor Ajit K Chaturvedi, Director, IIT Roorkee, said, “The Rock and Fluid Multi-physics Laboratory at IIT Roorkee is ideally located near the Himalayan Mountain ranges and very close to the headquarters of ONGC. This lab will significantly contribute to the petroleum engineering profession, groundwater exploration and resource characterization. This will help towards a sustainable approach in energy exploration.”