Every three years, the research scientists and code developers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) convene a symposium to highlight research advances made using the TOUGH family of codes. Originally developed to model fluid and heat flow in unsaturated porous geologic media, the TOUGH codes now include capability to model fluid-rock interactions, as well as fully coupled thermal, hydraulic, chemical, and mechanical processes in geologic fluid systems. Here at Virginia Tech, the Computational Geofluids Lab implements all flavors of the TOUGH codes, including TOUGH2, iTOUGH2, TOUGH3, TOUGHREACT, and we even worked a bit with a pre-release version of TREACT-MECH. We use these simulation tools for much of our research, including problems such as geologic CO2 sequestration in basalt reservoirs, basalt dissolution and secondary alteration, regional-scale groundwater flow from the Chilean Altiplano to the Atacama Desert, dissolution and transport around a salt diapir, and most recently, variable density oilfield wastewater disposal.
Given our interest in the TOUGH codes, we traveled to LBNL to attend the TOUGH Symposium 2018, learn about recent advances, and present our own research. On Monday, Rick Jayne presented his research on the implications of spatial reservoir uncertainty during CO2 injections in a flood basalt reservoir. His extended abstract for this study won the Best Student Paper Award, and his talk did not disappoint. The following day, I presented a recent study on the effects of fluid density variations during (& after) oilfield wastewater disposal. We had a great time in Berkeley & we look forward to visiting friends and colleagues at the lab well ahead of the next symposium in 2021. Click through the slides below to see a few pics from the trip.