Abstract:
In this presentation, I will use a large multi-disciplinary industrial project in enhanced oil recovery (EOR), of which my group is a part, to motivate and describe a new multi-scale equation of state (EOS) framework for multi-component, multi-phase equilibrium flash calculations. The key features of this multi-scale approach to the classical isothermal, isobaric flash problem include (1) the use of the Gibbs-Helmholtz equation to constrain the energy parameter in the SRK equation, (2) a novel up-scaling equation that acts as a natural bridge between the molecular and bulk fluid length scales, and (3) the use of internal energies of departure from NTP Monte Carlo simulations to gather information at the molecular length scale. We call the resulting cubic EOS the Gibbs-Helmholtz Constrained (or GHC) equation.
During the course of this talk I will also describe various aspects of modeling and simulation in EOR, give an overview of the technical complexity, highlight the roles that different collaborators play in making an EOR venture successful, address issues related to environmental stewardship, and present some results of industrial applications using animations.
Biography:
Professor Angelo Lucia has a B.S. in Chemical engineering from the University of Rhode Island and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Connecticut. He is currently the Chester H. Kirk Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Rhode Island, a position he has held since 1996. Prior to that, he was a faculty member in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Clarkson University in Potsdam, NY for fifteen years. In the 1970’s he also worked for Union Carbide Corporation and Control Data Corporation.
Prof. Lucia’s main research interests include chemical process modeling, synthesis, design, sim-ulation and optimization, computational thermodynamics, applied mathematics, and numerical methods. His awards include the Outstanding Advisor Award, Clarkson University, 1986; John W. Graham Faculty Research Award, 1987; Merck, Sharp & Dohme Lecturer, 1993; Outstanding Teacher Award, 1993-94; Best Paper Award, Comput. Chem. Engng., 1996; ITC Annual Seminar Series Lecturer, 2000, and Outstanding Researcher, URI, 2001-02. Professor Lucia is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Global Optimization and the Journal of Thermodynamics.